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Batman Will Hug Your Children To Safety With A New Car Seat

Chris Sims — 2013-04-26T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Culture

Confession time: I've always been super nervous while riding in cars that other people are driving. I think it has a lot to do with watching the episode of Dragnet where Joe Friday did a slow motion breakdown of the various injuries you can sustain in a crash when I was like eight years old, but it persists to this very day. Now, though, the mad science of the 21st century has provided us with something that could cure me of this -- and possibly all - fears: a car seat that looks like Batman and is designed to hug children to safety.

Sadly, the makers have yet to produce this thing in adult sizes. They have no idea the amount of money they are leaving on the table.Produced by KidsEmbrace (note: not a great company name), the Batman car-seat is part of a line that also includes other fictional characters like Dora the Explorer, Spongebob Squarepants and Dale Earnhardt Jr., and clocks in at $149. I have no idea if that's expensive for a car seat, but if it is, keep in mind that it has a cape you can wrap around yourself. It's like being comforted by the Dark Knight Himself! Or, I guess, like getting one of those Inverted Takedowns from Arkham City. Your call.

The best thing about it, though, is that Batman's fists have been shaped from their normal status as the Hammers of Justice into cup holders that can hold a juice box.

Oh man.

You guys.

Why are there not comics about Batman holding juice boxes that I can read right now?

[via Gizmodo]

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Ask Chris #151: Flash! Savior Of The Universe!

Chris Sims — 2013-04-26T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion, Ask Chris

Over a lifetime of reading comics, Senior Writer Chris Sims has developed an inexhaustible arsenal of facts and opinions. That's why, each and every week, we turn to you to put his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions!

Q: Is there anything interesting about the Flash? Is he really a core player of the JLA like the animated series portrays? -- @JibblyChan

A: I think it says a lot about me that I always find questions like this really surprising, because I forget for long stretches of time that there are people who didn't get super obsessed with the DC Universe in the early to mid '90s. It goes without saying that this is a symptom of a larger problem I have with acknowledging that other people actually have opinions about things, and that they arrived at them by doing different things than I did, but we all have flaws we need to work on.

I mean, I won't work on any flaws I may have, but I can definitely tell you why the Flash is one of the best and most interesting characters in comics. Or at least, why he was.Historically speaking, the Flash is easily one of the most important characters in comics. As much as we like to assume that the DC Universe is largely built around Superman and Batman, the Flash has been at the center of things pretty often. Barry Allen's introduction ushered in the Silver Age, bridged the gap with the Golden Age by introducing the concept of Earth-2, and his death, maybe The Last Good Death In Comics, arguably marked the end of the Bronze Age, and even after his eventual (and regrettable) return, he was the character that scrapped everything for Flashpoint and ~~the mess we're in now~~ the New 52. When the role was given to Wally West in the mid '80s The Flash was the book that defined the DC Universe for the next 20 years.

That's where my affection for the character comes from. I think it's become pretty clear over the past 150 columns that I've always liked Batman and Superman, but Flash, specifically Mark Waid's run with artists like Salvador LaRocca and the late, unparalleled Mike Wieringo, was the book that made me love the DC Universe as a whole. The history, the details, the way things were built off each other with the potential to interact, all of that was stuff that I was completely obsessed with because of the Flash. But I'll get back to that in a minute.

For now, let's talk about the character himself. You asked if there's anything that makes him interesting, and I'd argue that right from the start, super-speed is one of the most adaptable and inherently interesting super-powers in comics. The idea of a guy who runs really, really fast is the simplest thing in the world, but when you really sit down to think about it, there are so many things you can do with it. I'm not a huge fan of Silver Age Flash comics, but I'll give those creators credit for introducing the idea of all the various "speed tricks" and really making them work in a way that made those stories exciting. It's a trend that continued into the modern age, and the best stories are able to add new twists and turns onto that same simple idea. Stopping an earthquake with a million high-speed stomps on a fault line, punches that can propel someone into the atmosphere at escape velocity, vibrating fast enough to pass through solid objects and even high-speed learning, that's all stuff that's happened in comics, and that's just the physical side of things. Once you get into the big metaphors -- like, say, literally outrunning death -- things really get interesting.

Plus, it's one of those powers that truly works best in comics. I don't want to get all Scott McCloud on anybody, but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that comics are static pictures designed to give the illusion of motion. In movies and TV, super-speed never really looks right, but in comics, artists have decades of training in trying to make still pictures look like they're moving around and interacting with each other. When you exaggerate the motion, you get an effect that you can't really duplicate in a medium that doesn't speak in a language of speed lines.

Along the same lines, I really love the idea that the extra reaction time that comes with super-speed comes with a chance to examine whatever's in front of him and decide on a course of action. It makes him a problem-solver rather than just a guy who can punch you really fast, and while Barry Allen's not even my third-favorite Flash, even I can't deny that there's a lot of merit in the idea of a scientist who gets the ability to think his way through what would otherwise be a split-second decision. Plus, there are just great ideas you can do with that stuff, like the issue where the Flash sees a kid who's about to be struck by lightning and pours on the speed to "rescue" him, unaware that it's Billy Batson trying to transform into Captain Marvel.

Plus, that makes things extra dramatic when he's up against a problem that's moving as fast as he is. And, let's be honest here, a guy who can punch you really fast is still going to be pretty entertaining.

Because of that, he's a character that really rewards the same sort of approach, creating increasingly outlandish problems and then figuring out how to solve them with super-speed. You know, like that time that he had to race against a slightly off-model, non-copyright infringing Sonic the Hedgehog to keep aliens from blowing up the Earth (Note: This actually happened. In 1996). I don't mean to hammer the metaphor too hard, but when Flash succeeds, it's by moving fast and staying one step ahead of the reader.

That's why it was at its peak in the '90s.

I've written pretty extensively about the relationship between Wally West and Barry Allen and why the latter was better off dead than he ever was alive, but it really goes beyond just those two characters. In the '90s, the entire DC Universe felt like it was moving forward, and a lot of that had to do with what was going on in the Flash. After Crisis, when all the various Earths had merged into one, with different characters being moved into different slots on a longer timeline, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were pretty much anchored into their spots, but the second-stringers -- characters like Flash and Green Lantern who were already built on replacing their Golden Age predecessors -- were given an interesting excuse to be replaced. And in a lot of cases, they were. There was a new Robin, a new Green Lantern, a new Dr. Mid-Nite, a new Doom Patrol, a new Green Arrow, a new set of Titans, a new Hawkman, a new Legion of Super-Heroes, a new Wonder Girl. And because of all that, even if we all knew they were never really going to replace Superman or Batman with a teenage leather-jacketed clone or weird religious zealot with claws, there was context that allowed readers to think that maybe there would be a new version of those characters.

The idea of legacies and carrying on a heroic tradition became a central theme in the DC Universe, and a lot of that was because it was the driving force of The Flash -- and, to a lesser extent, JLA, which was predicated on the idea of doing a big team book with all the most popular superheroes (and Aquaman) for the first time since the '70s. It probably helped matters that Wally West was a character who dated back to 1959 and was replacing a guy who went out with the ultimate, universe-saving heroic death -- as opposed to, say, Kyle Rayner, a brand new character replacing a dude who went nuts, blew up a city and started coveting rings like he was about to ask somebody what taters were, precious -- but it's just as important that he embodied the idea of a legacy.

Wally's goal of living up to his uncle's legacy became one of the driving forces of his character, and the central conflict of a lot of those stories, especially the classic "Return of Barry Allen." Under Waid in particular, the Flash interacted with his predecessors, his descendants, and even teased the idea of "younger" characters like Jessie Quick and Impulse replacing him right then and there.

In a genre that's often defined by the lengths it'll go to in order to get the illusion of change without ever actually changing anything, there was actual change in those books. The Flash, both as a character and a comic, was at the forefront of that, and, along with Starman, did one of the absolute best jobs of balancing forward momentum against using the past to build stories. It's an extremely difficult thing to pull off, but when it works, it creates an engaging story that makes you want to learn more about what you're reading. It gets its hooks into you, and you end up obsessing about it for like 20 years.

And while the Flash was the earliest to make it a central theme, it wasn't the only one. It's the same core idea that would spread out into some of the best DC books of the era: Robinson, Harris and Snejbjerg's Starman, Ostrander and Mandrake's Martian Manhunter, Peyer and Morales's Hourman. They were all books that used pieces of the past to rebuild a rich, complex DC Universe using the ideas of legacy and momentum. It gave the DCU a foundation that was different than the Marvel Universe, which has always been more based around everything happening now, with pieces of different books popping up in unexpected places (like, for instance, Dr. Doom fighting Spider-Man), and it made for a really strong, unified background that supported these creators.

I don't know if I'll ever understand why they made the choice to undermine and ultimately dismantle that, first by shifting into reverse and bringing back all the old characters and then rebooting yet again to ensure that the legacy characters "never existed," but, well, that's comics. If I was interested in being fair, I might point out that they're still in the process of building the current DC Universe and figuring out what it's going to be about now, but I'll start being fair when more than four of those comics start being good.

Huh. Kinda lost the plot there for a second. The point is, whether it's acknowledged or not, the Flash is a character who has all of that as his history, with powers that are the perfect combination of being visually striking and informing his view on the world. You asked if there was anything interesting about him. I'm not sure there's anything that's not.

You know, except for, like, everything about Barry Allen. That dude's a stone cold snooze.

That's all we have for this week, but if you've got a question you'd like to see Chris tackle in a future column, just send it to @theisb on Twitter with the hashtag #AskChris, or send an email to chris@comicsalliance.com with [Ask Chris] in the subject line!

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Evan McIsaac's Construction Paper Sailor Moon Music Video Is A Sight To Behold [Video]

Chris Sims — 2013-04-25T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Video, Anime

Back when I was an impressionable teen, I used to watch a ton of Anime Music Videos. I assume they're still around (especially now that you don't have to spend all night downloading them on Usenet), but on the off chance that you're not familiar, the idea was that people would edit together scenes from anime to one of the popular tunes of the day. My personal favorite was one for LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out," if only because the line "Kinda like Shaft, so you could say I'm Shaftin'" was accompanied by a clip from Shaft in the middle of a bunch of anime.

Anyway, I haven't watched any in a long while, but it's nice to see that, at least in one case, the art form has evolved in new and terrifying ways. Witness young Evan McIsaac, lip synching Estelle and Janelle Monae's "Do My Thing" while wearing construction paper costumes of all of Sailor Moon's Sailor Scouts. All of them. At the same time. It is glorious.

McIsaac originally uploaded this video last year, and since I haven't seen it before, I'm guessing that someone fell down on the job of including his surprisingly detailed costumes in our weekly Best Cosplay Ever feature. That Sailor Mercury hair deserves some kind of award all on its own. Wait, is "award" the word I'm thinking of? Maybe... "sanction?" It's hard to tell.

The video appears to be McIsaac's only foray into the world of pop music, but it is most certainly onto the only video in which he dresses up as one of the senshi. In addition to a long-running series of episode reviews, he has also recreated all of the Sailor Scouts' transformation sequences. They are... certainly interesting.

Seriously though: You have no idea how excited I am to be living in a time where this is a thing that a) exists, and b) can be viewed by total strangers from the comfort of their living rooms. Truly, we live in the strangest of all possible worlds.

[Via igeektrooper]

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Bizarro Back Issues: 'The Robot War Of Smallville' (1957)

Chris Sims — 2013-04-25T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Humor

In a lot of ways, Superboy is one of DC's best stabs at capturing the kind of wish fulfillment character that Captain Marvel perfected. It's one of the simplest ideas in comics, taking all the powers of Superman and compressing them down into a pint-sized package that also went to school and was secretly way cooler and smarter than any of his classmates who probably didn't even know about the Bottle City of Kandor. You can see the appeal for the audience.

But with those awesome powers came situations that could challenge an indestructible teen, drawing out the metaphors of growing up and presenting them as part of the grand soap-opera of superheroism. You know, like that time everyone in Smallville became a robot and Superboy had to kill his best friends and family. We've all been there, right?Okay, so maybe none of us have been there, but that didn't stop Jerry Coleman and John Sikela from dropping that very situation into Adventure Comics #237. At the time, Adventure was an anthology title that featured a Superboy story as the lead, with backups featuring Aquaman and Green Arrow in their watery and/or archery-laden attempts at providing charity to the Old Seaman's Home and trying super hard to be Batman, respectively. Ten months after this issue, though, Adventure would debut a new set of characters that would eventually take over the title, the Legion of Super-Heroes. Finally, the children of the fifties would be freed from the terrible burden of pretending to care about sea-crime every single month.

History aside, I mention all this because the way this story plays out is pretty weird for LOSH fans, but we'll get around to that later. For now, our story kicks off with Superboy returning from what Coleman refers to as "an out-of-town mission," and right away we're dealing with something that's not quite up to expectations. I mean, really, if you're not going to provide any details, why limit yourself to "out-of-town?" Send that kid to space, man, it doesn't cost anything extra.

Anyway, Superboy descends on his hometown and announces, to no one in particular, "I have so many friends there!" Please note that this is not something that children who actually have many friends have ever been compelled to say out loud, but Superboy's sad desire to will acceptance into existing through the power of postive (and audible) thinking is a topic for another time. For now, what matters is his evaluation of his teenage sweetheart, Lana Lang:

I'm not really one to romanticize the past -- except in the case of old comics about Superboy and his yellow boots, which are objectively pretty rad -- but I do long for a time when people would respond to a slight stutter with "your voice sounds strange -- almost mechanical!" When flu season rolls around this year, I encourage all of you to make subtle insinuations that your friends and coworkers are robots whenever they so much as sniffle. We can make a finer world... together.

As you might expect from the title of the comic, Superboy's out-of-f**king-nowhere evaluation of Lana is 100% accurate. She's a robot, and she's not the only one. And they're so robots that they are engaging in insane cartoon robot behavior:

Superboy understandably freaks out and heads home to find that even his own parents are robots, and assumes that this is all some elaborate prank to trick him. If that's the case, though, it's a pretty terrible plan: These robots are walking around buzzing and drinking oil and, in the case of Ma Kent, have chunks of their face hanging off like the Terminator. They're not exactly fooling anybody into thinking they're real people.

It's not all bad, though. If nothing else, we get a pretty awesome panel that looks like Superboy flying through the set of They Live:

There's even a robot duplicate of Superboy himself, and what's more, he knows that Superboy is actually -- spoiler warning -- Clark Kent! And what's more, Robosuperboy (Superoboy?) has orders to drive the genuine article out of town by repeatedly punching him. Clearly, something is jacked up beyond all recognition in Smallville.

Obviously, Superboy has only one course of action open to him: brutally destroying all robots, starting with his own family and friends.

The next time someone tells you that Silver Age comics are nothing but silly nonsense that don't have the "mature" themes of today's books, remind them that there was an issue where Superboy straight karate chopped his dad in half and then ripped his mom's head off with one hand. Actually, now that I'm actually writing it out, this might be the only Silver Age comic that's still in continuity.

Anyway, the reason that Superboy has gone all Magnus: Robot Fighter (minus the fetching minidress) is that he has leapt to the conclusion that an army of alien robots have decided to invade the Earth, using Smallville as their beachhead. This might seem like a pretty dubious leap of logic, as anyone smart enough to master interplanetary travel and advanced robotics should realize that you don't want to start in the town that has the indestructible teenager running around, but let's be real: In the fifties, this happened on, at the very least, a quarterly basis. It's a safe assumption.

But it's actually not what's going on, and Superboy's first clue to the real haps comes when he casually decides to check out the general store with his x-ray vision. Oh, and then Smallville gets nuked from orbit.

Seriously.

Superboy flies up, coming to the immediate (and again, completely accurate) realization that it was a bomb aimed at Smallville from -- incoming awesome band name -- "some space enemy." But what was actually destroyed was a dummy town -- "like those dummy towns the Nazis built in World War II!" Of course! The real Smallville is a few miles away, hidden by fog, which as we all know blocks any and all effects of atomic weapons dropped from space. So, just so we're clear on this, the entire premise of this story is that Superboy has no idea where his hometown is actually located. You'd think that's something he would know.

Still, the question is left as to just who's responsible for building the fake town, and that's where things get weird. Superboy flies out to space to see who's hanging around in orbit, and runs into The Interplanetary Vigilantes.

These dudes are 100% awesome. Not only do they run around the galaxy with transistor radios strapped to their chests for space reasons, they also create the weirdest plans imaginable. Seriously, nobody thought to just tell Superboy that somebody was trying to space-bomb him and then build the fake Smallville? I realize he was on an "out-of-town" mission, but these dudes are from space. They could probably catch up.

What really makes them great, though, is the way they respond to Superboy's gratitude:

Dudes are hard.

Now, here's what makes this interesting: Less than a year later in Adventure Comics #247, Superboy would get a visit from another bunch of outer-space do-gooders who would decide that the best way to help him out was to pull off elaborate and confusing hoaxes. That, of course, was the Legion of Super-Heroes, who would grow to have one of DC's most dedicated fan-bases. But really, was having them around worth ditching the Interplanetary Vigilantes? I mean, they're vigilantes. They don't even have legal authority; it's cosmic mob justice y'all.

How is that not in an ongoing title right now?

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Mark Waid And Dean Haspiel Relaunch 'The Fox' At Archie Comics

Chris Sims — 2013-04-24T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Archie, News

Despite various incarnations over the years (including two separate versions published by DC Comics) and the involvement of creators like Carmine Infantino and Alex Toth, Archie's superhero characters have always been the weirder branch of the Riverdale family tree. Over the last year, though, the revival they've attempted with New Crusaders seems like a good enough try at rebuilding their characters into a new, cohesive universe.

Now, they've taken another big step: Recruiting Mark Waid and Dean Haspiel to relaunch The Fox in a new series that's scheduled to hit shelves later this year.Originally created by Joe Blair and Irwin Hassen in 1940, the Fox feels like a mash-up of the more popular heroes of the Golden Age: Paul Patten was a reporter and photographer who donned a black costume with pointy ears in order to fight crime and get good stories. He even had the requisite girlfriend with the truly hilarious name Ruth Ransom, presumably reflecting her status as a potential kidnap victim in need of a Foxy rescue.

Waid and Haspiel are, to say the least, a pretty intriguing choice to relaunch the title. One of my favorite things about the New Crusaders book is how it's built around the ideas of legacy heroes. That was a major selling point of the DC Universe for me when I was growing up, and before DC steadily did away with that idea, Waid was one of the architects that really made it work. Haspiel isn't quite as big a name in the superhero genre, but still, an Archie superhero book from the guy who worked with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor and The Quitter is intriguing enough just as a concept that I want to see it right now.

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The Strange Case Of The 'Like A Virus' Kickstarter And Its Evil IndieGoGo Doppelganger [Interview]

Chris Sims — 2013-04-24T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Interviews

A few weeks ago, Ken Lowery and Robert Wilson IV launched a Kickstarter campaign for Like A Virus, a one-shot ghost story about a medium trying to uncover the mystery of a local haunting. Within a few days, they'd met their goal, but then something unusual happened: The entire Kickstarter campaign, from Wilson's pages to the rewards promised for backers, had been copied to a fraudulent IndieGoGo campaign, with the scam artists behind it sending out press releases to drum up business for their (nonexistent) version.

To say the least, it's a pretty weird situation. I spoke to Lowery and Wilson to find out how they dealt with having their (very real) comic cloned for a scam, and how it affected what they're doing.ComicsAlliance: Let's start by talking about Like a Virus, and the actual Kickstarter you guys set up.

Ken Lowery: It's a one-shot, 23-page comic book. It's a ghost story, and it's a little bit of a mystery. We have a main character who's a medium, and she's trying to figure out the source of a haunting in her neighborhood. She wants to resolve it, and hopefully bring peace to the ghost as well. The complete story is her investigating this haunting, confronting the ghost, and speaking with it.

CA: That sounds exciting. Talking to ghosts.

KL: [Laughs] Yeah. It's kind of, I don't know, "somber" isn't really the right word. How would you describe it, Robert?

Robert Wilson IV: It's not an action comic.

KL: It's not.

RW: I definitely see that it's a bit of a mystery and a bit suspense, but it's in a weird place that defies genre and easy description, which is one reason I was excited to just take it to Kickstarter. I don't think there's any publisher out there that would want to publish this one-shot ghost story, which... do you feel comfortable talking about the heavy themes, Ken?

CA: Don't spoil it!

KL: We say it's a ghost story, and when you say that, you get a certain idea in your mind of what that is. It's a little bit that, and a little bit not that. It's not spooks and scares and loud noises, it's trying to figure out what's keeping this ghost here, what's tying her to the world, what can she not let go of, and trying to resolve that. I guess the closest comparison I can think of is some of Benito Cereno and Nate Bellegarde's Hector Plasm. There are stories in that where sometimes, he just wants to sit and talk to a ghost. It's kind of like that, figuring out the story of the ghost and what can bring it to a resolution.

CA: Robert's doing a book for Monkeybrain, Knuckleheads, that's his first published comic. You, as a comics writer, are pretty new.

KL: The only thing I've ever done that's been published is a backup story for a series called Black Diamond, from Larry Young, back in 2006 or something. It was a little six-page backup, and I've never done any comics work since then. Me and a local artist named Benjamin Hall did it, and he was doing Dummy's Guide To Danger for Viper at the time. He was real, I was not.

This is the first full-length story I've done in comic book form, and definitely the first thing I've done that I'll consider "mine," co-owned with Robert. Not work for hire.

CA: But you have had success with Kickstarter before.

KL: Yeah, last year, for Season 3 of The Variants, which is a web series I do with Richard Neal, who owns Zeus Comics here in Dallas. We got to a point where it was no longer sustainable to continue funding a web series ourselves, so we felt confident that we had two seasons of material that we could show people and give them an idea of what they were going to get, and then raise the money for Season 3. We thought if we could get the funding all at once, we could film everything all together rather than staggering it out over six months like we had been before, and basically kind of act like a Real Boy. Figure out a production schedule, set aside two weeks to film everything, costumes, continuity, all that good stuff.

We raised just under $14,000 for that one, and our original goal was $8,000. We set out stretch goals to add new episodes, so we got to do a full order of ten episodes for Season 3.

CA: I've talked to a lot of people who have done multiple Kickstarters, like Ryan Browne, who did Blast Furnace and then used what he learned there to do God Hates Astronauts. But you guys, and this is my This American Life segue, ran into something that was really unexpected. You were telling me before we started the interview that it was Robert who made the discovery.

RW: I feel like probably every comic creator egomaniac has multiple Google Alerts set up for things surrounding their name, and I got a Google Alert telling me that something on IndieGoGo was using my name a bunch. This was maybe... last Sunday? Our campaign had only been rolling for like three days, and I think we had just met our goal. I hopped over, and it was identical. It was the exact same, all the text, all the images, except for a few things that whoever copied it had to write themselves, and it was obvious that English was a second language. This dude was stumbling through some pretty rudimentary sentence construction. I think that's when I called you, Ken.

KL: I was at a movie. It was date night, and that's inviolate. [Laughs] But I saw it, this text message saying someone had copied our campaign on IndieGoGo, and had started posting it on ComicVine and Comic Book Resources.

RW: And then we found that they were posting on one or two other places. Bleeding Cool and somewhere else.

KL: I guess they contacted Rich Johnston directly.

CA: They sent one to us, too. We got an email from Fake Ken Lowery that went to Joe Hughes.

KL: [Laughs] Awesome.

CA: It's funny, because -- full disclosure -- Ken and I are friends. We've worked together on projects before.

KL: For going on five years now.

CA: So this was the worst way he could contact people, if only because one site had Rich Johnston pointing out that you once publicly talked about not liking him, and the other site has friends of yours working there.

KL: Right. I get the text from Robert, I go home, and I get on the phone. We figure out that he -- I say he, but it might've been a team of people for all I know -- constructed a pretty comprehensive press release system for his fake IndieGoGo campaign, which was almost identical to ours, right down to image placement. He contacted all the comics news sites, posted on forums on websites that had special forums for showing off your Kickstarter or your new project.

It's funny, I saw the text and got it immediately. We already knew from that tracking site that we were on track to go beyond our goal, so clearly people are watching these things to see what's successful and what's blowing up on a certain percentage, and I guess IndieGoGo's process is pretty quick. This thing was up when ours was only a few days old on Kickstarter, and it was a fast turnaround. I assume they went with IndieGoGo because, unlike Kickstarter, they pay out immediately, so if I donate $20 to the campaign, you get that $20 that day, versus Kickstarter, which only pays out at the end, if you hit your goal, and if everything clears.

I think by the time we got it shut down that night -- we basically just got enough people on Twitter to go and report it -- it had only gotten $10. Then there was a process of signing up for six or seven comic book message boards so I could say "No, actually, I'M the real Ken Lowery, here's the actual campaign, you can see it was copied." I was happy to see that by the next morning, most of those fake threads had been deleted, although according to my Google Alerts, they were still posting about it elsewhere even after the campaign had been shut down.

RW: They had a better broad PR strategy than we do!

KL: It was actually kind of educational.

CA: Of all the Kickstarters that I've covered on CA and War Rocket Ajax, I've never heard of this happening before.

RW: Neither have I.

CA: It seems like such a simple scam, though, that of course it would happen. But it makes me wonder how they pick what to copy. I assume there's not, like, a fake Veronica Mars movie campaign on IndieGoGo, or even a fake Order of the Stick drive. I'm wondering if, not to insult you guys, it's a matter of you guys being --

RW: Relatively unknown.

CA: Exactly, unknown enough that once they knew there was an audience there that wanted it, you weren't so famous that people wouldn't know it wasn't you.

RW: That's a pretty reasonable assumption.

KL: Like I said, when I saw the text, it all made sense immediately. Oh, we're not well-known, oh, we're tracking to do really well, why wouldn't this be happening? If not to us, then to somebody. Over a couple years, I've backed thirty campaigns, and like you, I've never seen this happen before. It's easy to do, it's easy to set up accounts on comic book message boards and all that. I'm still impressed by how thorough it was, doing all that and going to all the press outlets and drumming up business. I guess they did us a favor, almost.

CA: It certainly seems like you're getting a lot of coverage and getting the word out that you might not have otherwise. Just the sheer oddness of it.

RW: Yeah.

KL: I suppose. That was the lemonade we made out of it. All things considered, it was pretty low stress, it only took a couple of hours to get the page shut down and it seemed like it was done the next morning. You walk out of a movie and find out someone's committing minor identity theft [laughs]. It was a little hairy there, but it turned out nice. Publicity's publicity.

RW: I think it'll be a good thing in the long run. Like we said, we hit our goal really fast, but I think it's because we both have really well-established, if pretty small, networks and fan bases each. I think everyone who supported the project in those first couple days were people that we knew, either through me going to cons and building a grassroots fanbase for my work, or Ken with his work on Fake AP Stylebook or the Variants, but this definitely helped us cast a wider net.

KL: We got eyes. We have multiple coverages on it now just because it's such an odd story. In the long run, it's a good thing, but it was pretty bizarre in the moment.

RW: Very bizarre.

CA: So it wasn't a fake fake Ken Lowery. This wasn't a publicity stunt on your part.

KL: [Laughs] No, this was not a "false flag" operation. I believe that's the term for it. Even though, as we were talking about it, I was thinking "this would've been really clever of us! If we'd thought to do this, damn, we should offer that service to other people!"

RW: Who's got the time?

CA: I hate to say I'm impressed, but they did have a very active PR campaign.

KL: They set up a YouTube account to upload a duplicate of our Kickstarter video. That was another thing we had to shut down.

RW: A really crappy rip.

KL: He was out there hustling, man. He was on message boards, posting images, uploading videos. I assume that, like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo has to verify your account, so there's something hooked up to that that he had to do. On that end, they shut it down, but the response form said "we passed this on to whoever," and we haven't heard back from it since then. I don't know if they're going to do anything about it, or crack down on it in any way.

CA: Part of me really wants to see that dude's version of Like A Virus, if his campaign succeeded. Getting a low-res JPG of Robert's cover printed out, with the interiors done by some Russian scam artist.

KL: [Laughs] With the five pages we have on the site...

CA: And a twist ending!

KL: In a dramatically different art style.

CA: So is there a moral to the story? That it's a good thing to Google yourself constantly?

RW: Google Alerts are useful, definitely.

KL: I fell down on that, but after this happened, I set up all kinds of Google alerts, and Robert found... Kicktraq, is that what it is? It tracks your trend and estimates what you're going to get at the end. If you seem to be on track to be successful, just set up some alerts with your name and your project name, just to see. It's good to know who's talking about it anyway, but there are apparently people who will spend a fair amount of time duplicating you in hopes of getting four or five thousand dollars.

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'Teen Titans Go!' Premieres Tonight On Cartoon Network

Chris Sims — 2013-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Television, Animation

From 2003 to 2006, Teen Titans was one of the most fun and enjoyable translations of the DC Universe to television, but sadly, all good things must end. I learned that from Star Trek, so it has to be true. Sometimes, however, good things manage to make a comeback, and tonight at 7:30 Eastern, Cartoon Network is proving that to be true with the premiere of Teen Titans Go!, a new show that reunites the cast and characters from the original animated series for all-new adventures.

CN was nice enough to send us an advance copy of the first two episodes, and you guys, they are pretty great.

Unlike the original show, which got a little dark there at the end once Deathstroke the Terminator started showing up and, you know, being Deathstroke the Terminator, Go! takes its cues from the shorts that originally appeared as part of the DC Nation block. As a result, there's a much bigger emphasis on comedy, and fortunately, the gags are pretty solid.

My personal favorite -- and the premise of the entire first episode -- is the bit where Raven (voiced by Tara Strong) is trying to get the rest of the Titans out of the tower so that she can watch a parody of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which also features Tara Strong:

It's a great gag, and it's far from the only one on the show.

Despite the laughs, though, it still follows the format of an action adventure show, albeit one that's oddly focused on food. The Titans go off to fight adventures (in search of sandwiches) and battle with supervillains (who make pies), and there's plenty of superheroic action mixed in with the jokes. There's even a helping of violence, most of which is inflicted on Cyborg, because he's a character who can have his arm ripped off and be perfectly fine in the next scene:

Incidentally, those particular moments have a nice touch of Dan Hipp's signature style, which makes sense since he's currently working at Warner Bros. Animation. That'd probably be enough to get me interested in the show, even if I didn't already like its predecessor.

Point being, it's pretty great, and definitely worth checking out. Catch the first two episodes tonight on Cartoon Network, and again on Saturday Morning's DC Nation block at 10 a.m. if you miss 'em.

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War Rocket Ajax #155: The Eisner Nominations Roundtable

Chris Sims — 2013-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: War Rocket Ajax

The nominees for the 2013 Eisner Awards have been announced, so this week on War Rocket Ajax, it's a roundtable discussion of who got a nomination, who got snubbed, and what it all means for comics. To that end, we welcome ComicsAlliance contributors Dylan Todd and David Wolkin to the show, and you can listen right here at ComicsAlliance!War Rocket Ajax #155: Billy Corrigan and the Infinite Sadness
(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

We are available on iTunes! Click here to find ComicsAlliance Presents War Rocket Ajax in iTunes, where you can subscribe and leave us a review if you enjoy the show!

You can also stream the show using the player above, or download it in MP3 format from WarRocketAjax.com.

This week, Chris is complaining about having to play video games for his job because he's an awful person, which isn't news to anyone. Meanwhile, Matt wants you to know about this interesting but obscure new film, Jurassic Park. Plus, it's that time again, as we read the new issue of Justice League and throw some shade at She-Ra.

In our roundtable, we discuss a number of Eisner-related topics, including the perceived bias against superhero publishers, particularly DC:

DYLAN: Frank Santoro put up a blog post after Before Watchmen, where he essentially did a blacklist of creators who worked on the project and said that he wasn't going to purchase their work or support their projects in anyway, and honestly, if I was an Eisner judge, I don't know if I'd go so far as to make out a list, but... none of those comics were any good, were they? I think it's very telling that five out of the six books for Best Continuing Series are published by Image.

MATT: And the only one that is not is Hawkeye.

DAVID: The thing about "bias" is that you need to prefer one thing over an equally valid alternative, which would suggest that Before Watchmen is an equally valid alternative to actual good comics. My sense is that in a lot of them, the art is really fantastic, so perhaps there was merit based on that, but usually a comic needs to have a story to it.

MATT: If anyone got skipped over for this, it was Darwyn Cooke and Amanda Conner, the artists, but this notion that everyone who worked on Before Watchmen has been excluded from the Eisners should be put to rest by the fact that Darwyn Cooke is nominated. He's nominated for The Score, under Best Adaptation.

David: Is it possible that there's an unspoken policy about fan-fiction at the Eisners?

Plus, Chris is grouchy. Of course he is!

Show Notes:

Follow Dylan Todd and David Wolkin on Twitter!

Chris's review of Injustice: Gods Among Us, in case you missed it.

Please enjoy this sexy photograph of Sam Humphries:

Chris's Rec: Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King

Matt's Rec: The Simpsons: Tapped Out

Comics Reviewed:

Justice League #19: "What happens is that 'Tower of Babel' was a really good story, and this is the dumber version of that, where someone goes into Batman's chest of drawers where he has his contingency plans in little metal briefcases with the logos of the people they can take out. You see Cyborg's logo, which is great, but Cyborg doesn't have a logo on his costume, which means that Batman either sat down and drew up a logo for Cyborg, or went to the graphic design department of WayneTech and had them do it."

Daredevil #25: "The big plot twist of this comic is the simplest thing. Anybody should've seen this plot twist coming, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It should've been sitting right there in front of me, but it surprises Daredevil in the story and I wasn't expecting it either."

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe #1: "It's kind of a weird mix of making Masters of the Universe a little edgier and a little more for thirty year-olds, but it's also got relationships in it that I really like. The way that Giffen writes Teela is really good. She's confident, she's got a sassiness to her. She's constantly giving Prince Adam s**t. It's good."

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ComicsAlliance Reviews 'Mortal Kombat' (1995), Part Two

Chris Sims — 2013-04-22T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Movies, Humor

Chris Sims: Welcome back for the second round of our in-depth review of 1995's Mortal Kombat! When we last left off, things had finally gotten interesting when Scorpion and Johnny Cage had a fight so intense that one of them exploded twice. It'll be great if this is a trend that continues, but to be honest, I'm not exactly optimistic.

Matt Wilson: Maybe we should just go on YouTube and watch Mortal Kombat - Every Fatality Supercut instead.Chris: I can't imagine that would have a less compelling plot. As we rejoin the story, it's time for another fight, so... yeah. I'm starting to regret saying that Street Fighter should've had more of a focus on the action. This time, though, it's a fight with some interesting consequences! Liu Kang is out on Fightin' Beach when Kitana walks up, complete with sexy, porn-esque flute music!

Matt: Once again, a key female character is not shown wearing her signature color, in Kitana's case, blue. For all we know, she could be a disguised Mileena!

Chris: It is pretty weird that they didn't even try to re-create anyone other than Scorpion and Sub-Zero's costumes, especially when they're all pretty easy to come by. I mean, Johnny Cage just had a fight with Scorpion while wearing the '90sest slacks ever, they could've at least thrown some shades on him.

Matt: I guess you can tell this isn't Mileena by the fact she isn't swallowing Liu Kang whole with her monster jaws. Anyway, she offers Liu Kang some Zen-style advice: "Use the element which brings life." Then the fight just kind of ends when Shang Tsung gets all dad on her.

Chris: For a second, I though that this fight was overloaded with slow motion, but then I realized that they were really just doing the moves that slowly. It's achingly slow paced, to the point where it looks like it's their first-ever dress rehearsal.

Matt: One of the main complaints about this movie was that the fights just weren't that great, and a lot of them do fit that bill. Kind of a big oversight when your movie eventually becomes nothing but a series of fights. The next one, Liu Kang vs. Sub Zero, isn't all that bad, though. At least, at first it isn't.

Chris: It might not be that bad if we weren't moving right into it from the "uh, I guess that's over?" feeling of Liu Kang vs. Kitana just kind of stopping for no reason, but it's definitely not good enough to hold my interest. LK and > 0 just kind of kick at each other for a little bit, then Sub-Zero creates a snowstorm at his belly button.

Chris: For what's basically his Ultimate Attack, there's a lot of standing around holding his tummy. It's kind of adorable?

Matt: Then Kitana comes in and reminds Liu Kang about what SHE JUST TOLD him, about the element of life. Liu Kang realizes she means water and doesn't take it upon himself to tell her that water isn't an element. At least not periodic-table-wise. This is the '90s, people.

Chris: Come on, dude. They have four-armed monsters and magic soul-eating character actors. They can roll with the Four Classical Elements if they want.

Matt: If Shang Tsung is going to rule Earth, dude better learn some science is all I'm saying. Anyway, Liu Kang uses a bucket of water Raiden conveniently placed in the room to somehow pierce Sub-Zero's wall of ice power and make a big icicle to impale him. So I think this actually fails chemistry and physics.

Chris: Which actually makes it perfectly appropriate for the world of Mortal Kombat. Between this and Scorpion being exploded, we've finally gotten two scenes that are almost like Fatalities, except that they're built around the person who's getting Fatality'd, and not the one actually winning the fight. It's kind of an interesting take on things, and one that I imagine was built around having the three characters who don't really have any awesome magical superpowers being the ones who had to win their fights.

Matt: The most fantastical of characters, Goro, is itching to get in there and kill all humans. He comes out and fights a guy named Art who we've seen exactly once and has had no lines, except maybe a sheepish hello. Despite this, Team Earth cheers him on like they are the oldest of pals.

Chris: Two things I want to point out here: 1) This is preceded by a montage of dudes doing pratfalls onto gravel that lasts twenty-seven seconds. It is literally just shots of guys falling down and making frowny faces.

Matt: It's a good enough short hand for "Goro beat a whole bunch of guys," I suppose.

Chris: 2) I'm just now noticing that Goro has a super-long torso to allow for his extra arms, but instead of giving him two sets of pecs (the muscles that, you know, move your arms around), they instead give him extra abs.

Matt: Blame Ed Boon and John Tobias for that one.

Chris: Goro ends up throwing down with our second unnamed black dude of the tournament (although Wikipedia informs me that he's Art, a friend of Johnny's), and after Shang Tsung tells him twice to Finish Him, Goro... just chops him in the head and doesn't actually do his signature fatality.

Matt: PG-13, you strike again! Shang Tsung absorbs Art's soul into his eye this time, even though that is not how that worked at all before, and Team Earth FLIPS OUT. They lose it over Art's death. It seems like a lot of stuff got cut out RE: Art. Apparently, there was even a scene where Team Earth goes out and buries him. He's Johnny Cage's Charlie, I guess, but instead of becoming Blanka, he just gets clobbered real hard.

Chris: I'm just gonna go ahead and say this right now: Mortal Kombat The Motion Pikture does not exactly do a great job of using the franchise's black characters. Aside from the two dudes that Shang Tsung has already eaten, Jax gets left back on Earth after telling Sonya "don't get on that boat!" and then just kind of shrugging when his partner runs off to hop on a ghost ship.

Matt: That said, Jax is the main character of Mortal Kombat Legacy and he's played by Michael Jai White in it, so I guess that character came out okay.

Chris: Team Earth has no time to debate the rakial politiks of Mortal Kombat, though, as they're worried about getting beaten to death by a four-armed monster. Johnny goes and complains to his dad -- sorry, Raiden, and Christopher Lambert gives them the weirdest pep talk ever, which ends with him casually sniffing Bridgette Wilson's hair.

Matt: His pep talk essentially consists of creepy moves like that and telling each of the three their biggest weaknesses, with no real advice for how to deal with them beyond, "Hey, prepare." Thanks, dad!

Chris: Liu Kang and his increasingly '80s Metal hair go to meditate on a beach, and we get a flashback to his dream sequence because, hell, it's been almost an hour since we've seen it, we might've forgotten Shang Tsung's a bad guy.

Matt: Or that Liu Kang's next! Meanwhile, Johnny and Sonya argue/flirt with all the chemistry of a couple cinder blocks.

Chris: One thing you can say about Street Fighter: They didn't even bother to try to put a romance in there, unless you count Bison cold running his seduction game on Chun-Li. Scenes like this show exactly why, although it's easy to believe that Wilson and Linden Ashby decided to play it for comedy. Her overwrought "Don't you dare do this, Johnny Cage!" is pretty hilarious.

Matt: There was supposedly more of the Liu Kang/Kitana stuff in the original script, but it got cut out. Probably for the best.

Chris: Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm missing it. The point to all this is that Johnny is going to go fight Goro now, and while Raidad makes a big show of being concerned, he reveals himself to be pretty stoked about it once Johnny stomps off to go make sure his combat slacks are freshly pleated. And hey, he's finally wearing sunglasses! For the first time! In this dark-ass room!

Matt: I get a kick out of how Lambert plays Raiden -- again, he's just so weird and mercurial -- but he really takes all the momentum out of every scene he's in. He's written as the guy who interrupts conversations or fights that are just getting good. Every time!

Chris: Not this time, though: Johnny squares off with Goro, then, in an act of supreme courage that shows us why he will be the one to save humanity, drops down, punches Goro in the balls and runs away. Raiden finds this hilarious.

Matt: That's actually a Classic Johnny Cage Mortal Kombat Fatality.

Chris: Is it really? I just assumed he'd been watching King of the Hill, though the lack of "THAT'S MY PURSE!" should've tipped me off.

Matt: Oh yeah, the splits and all. Upon Shang Tsung's urging, Goro chases Johnny out to a cliff side, where they continue fighting. Johnny gets the upper hand thanks to his broken-sunglasses-strength and kicks Goro off the side. Goro's like Samson, I guess, but instead of cutting his hair, it's punching him in the nuts. Why did no one think of this? (Also: Do you think he has four?)

Chris: It's an amazingly anticlimactic fight. It takes less time than an actual game of Mortal Kombat with me playing against Goro, and that's saying something. He just quips twice, boots him off a cliff, and we're done here.

Matt: Johnny doesn't have a lot of time to celebrate, because Sonya, like Goro, has also suddenly become considerably weaker for no reason, to the point that Shang Tsung can put her in a really basic armlock and render her totally helpless. He kidnaps her and takes her to Outworld for another fight because he made a BS deal with Johnny that was essentially, "You can fight Goro, but then I get to fight whomever I want."

Chris: Hey, don't forget that he's also pulling her hair!

Matt: Oh, right, it's the one-two combo. Raiden tells Johnny and Liu Kang that Sonya can't beat Shang Tsung because she's clearly just not tough anymore. But then Liu Kang remembers some rule that I think everyone just made up about Sonya having to accept Shang Tsung's challenge for them to actually fight. This has been foreshadowed or built up to exactly nowhere.

Chris: I honestly thought that Raiden calling Shang Tsung a coward for choosing to fight Sonya was the most insulting thing that was going to happen in this movie, but Raiden's blunt "No." when asked if Sonya even had a chance of beating him topped it in the most hilariously awful way possible. Dudes! Come on! She snapped a cyborg's neck with her calves yesterday! Give her a little credit, yeesh.

Matt: Really, how did she lose all her toughness this fast? Raiden tells Johnny and Liu Kang he can't go with them to Outworld, so they scoot on through the portal while Reptile bounces around, being a still-awful special effect.

Chris: We get a little buddy cop banter as Liu and Johnny walk through a set that could be a hellish fantasy kingdom or a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Either way, it's a world without lighting, where a poorly CGI'd Castle Grayskull looms over all. I'd be willing to tap out right now if the theme song didn't kick back in at just the right moment.

Matt: The giant tower is supposed to be all intimidating and scary, but the tower back on Shang Tsung Island looked exactly like this.

Chris: Liu Kang throws Reptile The Bad Special Effect into a statue which animates and becomes Reptile the Mortal Kombat Character, and they have a boring fight that is completely devoid of Johnny Cage, who I assume is just sort of chilling outside waiting to see how it all shakes out. Best of luck, Liu!

Matt: There's a moment when Reptile is stuck in the weird tentacle statue that is basically a scene from the Peter Gabriel "Kiss the Frog" video. It's that terrifying.

Chris: To its credit, this fight scene does give us a passable version of Liu Kang's bicycle kick, so at least they're delivering on that.

Matt: Here's something pretty sad: Reptile was actually added to the movie after focus groups said they wanted more, and better, fighting. This is the bone Paul W.S. Anderson threw fight fans. That said, it is easily the most acrobatic fight in the movie thus far. Robin Shou's fights as Liu Kang are nothing to go crazy over, but they're way ahead of anything anyone else is doing.

Chris: Post-fight, he walks around with Kitana and she talks about how she Believes In Him but there are Three Challenges and all that, but nobody remarks on the fact that Johnny Cage is completely gone from the film at this point. Like, he was standing there when the fight with Reptile happened, and now folks are just strolling around without even mentioning him.

Matt: He's back there, he's just not saying anything. He's pretty satisfied that he beat Goro, I guess.

Chris: Meanwhlie, Sonya has been full-on sexy bondaged and her hair has been teased to within an inch of its life. Ye cats, dude.

Matt: This is really bad. One of the things that you have to give fighting games as a genre is that they put men and women on equal footing, in terms of skills. Lots of them objectify women -- looking in your direction, Fatal Fury's Mai Shiranui -- but they're just as tough as men. They aren't damsels in distress. So this movie going that route is extra disappointing.

Chris: And it's so lazy! She's dressed in a weird leather cheerleader skirt and telling Shang Tsung "my friends will come for me!" She was clocking metalheads with a shotgun an hour ago!

Matt: It isn't even true to this movie's own version of Sonya. It was about 10 minutes ago that she was telling Johnny Cage to f**k off!

Chris: It's basically awful, and only gets worse when Johnny, Liu Kang and Kitana show up dressed like the Undertaker's druids so they can rescue their damsel by letting Liu Kang fight Shang Tsung instead of Sonya.

Matt: And Kitana adds another rule to the mix: "Mortal Kombat cannot be won by treachery." They're just making this s**t up!

Chris: I almost feel bad for Shang Tsung at this point. You know they were like "Okay, if you win this tournament you can invade Earth" and then he did and they were like "oh sorry, we meant if you win it... ten times?"

Matt: He's a victim of bureaucracy, man. So the theme music plays while Liu Kang and Shang Tsung duke it out. Liu Kang catches him with a punch to the lower lip and Shang Tsung goes Hogan. That is, if "going Hogan" meant summoning the reanimated souls of dead warriors to fight on your behalf.

Chris: Suddenly bringing in four new dudes to fight one guy kind of seems like "treachery" to me, but clearly, the rules of Mortal Kombat are eluding me. Let me know if they start to have a Traditional Survivor Series match or something.

Matt: Liu Kang beats the souls pretty handily, so Shang Tsung tries another tack: Transforming into Liu Kang's brother and making Liu blink uncontrollably. Robin Shou must have taken an acting class that equated "disbelief" with "blinking a lot."

Chris: The best thing about this is that Liu Kang is watching Shang Tsung when he transforms into Chan, and then straight up says "you're not really Chan" and Shang Tsung still tries to stick with his lie. It's kind of astonishing.

Matt: Some spikes rise up out of the floor below -- I guess we finally got that pit stage -- and THEN Shang Tsung gives up on the ruse just as he starts to attack Liu Kang. I'd think the mindf**k would be a lot more effective if your dead brother was actually FIGHTING you, but Shang Tsung doesn't seem to think so.

Chris: Or if there was any actual trickery involved? Like, Liu Kang knows it's not Chan from the start, and just sort of stands there going "C'mon, Shang Tsung, we gotta fight here." Just deck him, dude! Seriously, Sonya would've had this fight won in like 30 seconds.

Matt: There is a weird argument I don't even understand about whether Shang still owns the souls he's taken from various fighters over the years. It kind of just amounts to "You have no power over them!" "Yes I do!" None of it matters, though. Liu Kang knocks Shang Tsung into the pit and he dies. Liu says "Flawless Victory" even though Shang Tsung clearly hit him several times. It's dumb.

Chris: It's super f**king dumb. Chan floats out of Shang Tsung's skull and holds hands with his bro, and then he wanders back into the light. Then everybody goes home, and we get some happy children! Children we have never seen before! But they're here now, and they're pretty happy! Hooray! USA #1!

Matt: Raiden stands by as kids with flags run by. He says whatever he feels like. Honestly, Christopher Lambert just ad-libs these lines, right? He basically says, "Oh, hey, I actually didn't know anything that was f**king going to happen. Glad you're back, guys!"

Chris: Oh man. Then the greatest thing happens: Shao Khan shows up (which should be impossible since he lost this Mortal Kombat tournament) and says he's going to eat their souls, and Raiden goes "I DON'T THINK SO!" and everyone poses and the theme song comes back in. I am literally crying from laughing at this.

Matt: That's a completely added-in ending. It originally ended with Raiden saying "Hey, good job." But then they had to add in this promo for the EXCITING SEQUEL.

Chris: It's basically perfect, though. Seriously, the dumbest, most hilarious thing ever.

Matt: There could not be a more suited ending to this movie.

Matt: I'll say it: Christopher Lambert cracked me up every time I saw him. Raiden is not a well-written character, but he's so clearly just f**king around through this whole thing that you have to just kind of sit back and enjoy his oddball presence.

Chris: Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's the same way as Shang Tsung. He and Lambert seem to be enjoying themselves way more than anyone else who was acting in and/or watching this movie.

Matt: I also kind of have a weird respect for the music choices in this thing, or in the soundtrack. Anything that includes that crazy theme song, KMFDM and George Clinton has to be revered just for being eclectic.

Chris: I think we can both agree that the theme song is a true high point, not just of this movie, but of art in general.

Matt: Also: The movie, despite not having the characters' costumes or R-rated violence or even any blood, does make an effort to follow the story of and have the feel of the games. This is, through and through, a Mortal Kombat movie.

Chris: And along those lines, it's at its best when it's just insanely over the top. The fight with Scorpion where he catches on fire and explodes twice and then Johnny drops an autographed picture is fantastic, and even the lesser Sub-Zero fight is a decent touch. If the rest of the movie had been like that, or at least brought more of that craziness to the fights, I think we'd like it a lot more. Tony Jaa's Mortal Kombat would've been amazing, but at the very least, it could've used a little Jackie Chan.

Chris: Everything after the fight with Goro up to the actual last four seconds of the movie is hot garbage.

Matt: As we said, the turn that Sonya's character takes isn't just bad storytelling, it's borderline offensive.

Chris: I agree with everything you just said except the word "borderline." It's godawful. She wasn't a great character to begin with, but she gets thrown under the bus in the last act with a pretty ruthless efficiency.

Matt: I was trying to be judicious. While we're on storytelling, I noticed near the end that this movie had no stakes at all. Every character accomplishes what they want to do pretty easily. Johnny wants to beat Goro, so he does. Sonya wants to beat Kano, so she does. Even Liu Kang's fight against Shang Tsung doesn't seem too hard. Everything seems so dang easy that it's hard to get invested in it.

Chris: This movie also sets up an ensemble cast of three characters, and then forgets two of them exist for the entire climax. Johnny and Sonya do absolutely nothing during the entire trip to Castle Greyskull, and Liu Kang didn't really do anything before that. He just shows up out of nowhere and goes "hey, I'm the main character of this movie now."

Matt: Even the Last Castle is just a bigger version of the castle they were just at, in a slightly darker place. How is Outworld that much worse than they island where they were? I think a lot of this could be fixed if the movie had a little more of a sense of humor. Street Fighter had a similar feeling of being inconsequential, but it was campy, so it didn't matter. This at least had an air of wanting the audience to take it seriously.

Chris: Street Fighter kind of starts dumb and then gets more ridiculous and silly and enjoyable as it goes on. Mortal Kombat starts off pretty good, but drops the ball so hard there's an impact crater. Also, the lighting sucks. And the effects suck. And the fights suck.

Matt: The effects, besides Goro, are so, so, so bad.

Chris: It's pretty terrible.

Matt: One last thing about the story: It's like when a four-year-old tells you a joke. They get to a place where the remember something they were supposed to say earlier, then add it in too late. That's how this movie treats the character of Art and every rule of the Mortal Kombat tournament.

Matt: This movie's a mess, but like Raul Julia in Street Fighter, Christopher Lambert had a good time on it somehow.

Chris: We can all agree that Mortal Kombat as a game is dumber than a bucket of doorknobs, but still, this movie didn't even make the most with what it had.

Matt: The third act -- if you can break this movie whose middle is nothing but a string of fight scenes into acts -- is abysmal. This movie the other extreme from what Street Fighter was. That movie lost the concept of the tournament entirely; this one maybe focused on it too much.

Chris: Well, I have high hopes that our next film won't make that mistake! How can you possibly go wrong with a movie based on a game with the least possible plot?

Matt: And that is known for...well you guys know what Dead or Alive is known for.

Chris: Physics. It's known for physics.

Matt: And volleyball.

More Fighting Game Roundup!

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Ponies... In... Spaaaaace In 'My Little Pony' #6 [Preview]

Chris Sims — 2013-04-19T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Previews, IDW

In the first arc of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic, everyone's favorite highly marketable horses had to deal with body-snatchers, vampire jackalopes and a cameo appearance by the bad guy from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In the second arc, things are finally starting to get a little weird. Specifically, Rarity has been kidnapped and taken to the moon by evil forces, leaving her friends (and their royal princess pals) the task of rescuing her. So naturally, the question on everyone's mind is just how are these ponies supposed to get to the moon?

By throwing a rope around it and dragging it out of the sky so they can head up on a tightrope, of course. Check out a seven-page preview below to see exactly how they do it!

While Rarity's peril is still the focus of the current story, one assumes that the third arc will feature Ponyville dealing with the horrifying ramifications of, you know, gravity. Here's the official solicitation for this issue:

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #6

Heather Nuhfer (w) o. Amy Mebberson (a) o. Stephanie Buscema, Mebberson (c)

Nightmare Moon returns! But it's not the same old Nightmare Moon! Someone new, someone close to our heroes, has taken the mantle! What will the Ponies do when the danger hits so close to home? Read it and find out!

FC o. 32 pages o. $3.99

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #6 hits shelves at your local comic book store and digitally next Wednesday, April 24.

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Ask Chris #150: #150!

Chris Sims — 2013-04-19T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Humor, Ask Chris

Q: What is the best 150th issue of any title ever? -- @phillyradiogeek

A: Comics will use just about any occasion they can for a special issue, but 150 is a pretty weird number to be excited about. Unless, of course, it's the 150th installment of a weekly Q&A column about comics, in which case you should get very excited and also provide gifts to the writer.

Very expensive gifts. Or cash.Sorry, what I meant to say was that because it's such a kind-of-but-not-really-big-number sort of situation, looking at all of them produces some weird results. There are 150th issues that just cold skip over like it's no big deal, and others that try to make a huge thing out of it, so it ends up being a mixed bag. So in honor of the occasion, let's have a few from some of my favorite series.

To start with, I'm sad to say that Detective Comics, which hit #150 back in 1951, doesn't really measure up. Despite leading off with a story where Batman fights the gun-toting ghost of an executed hitman, it ends up being a slightly more improbable version of a Scooby-Doo plot, where a gang boss is using a cardboard cutout covered in chemicals that are simultaneously invisible and glow in the dark. Even the backup, "Robotman Meets Robotcrook," is nowhere near as good as you want a story with that title to be.

The sesquicentennial issue of Batman, however, features a story where Batman decides he wants to get laid and builds a robot to handle his crime-fighting while he's macking on the ladies.

Now we're getting somewhere. Any issue featuring Batman yelling like a teen on Tumblr about wanting to live life his own way! and wearing a rose pinned to his tights is going to be in contention for the best comic ever, regardless of issue number, and that's before you get to the part where he builds a crime-fighting robot to free up his social calendar.

Even beyond that, Jerry Coleman and Sheldon Moldoff give us one of my all-time favorite panels:

Dude is just so happy, and the guy getting clobbered is weirded out.

But just for the sake of argument, let's see what else comics that hit #150 had to offer. Amazing Spider-Man seems like it would be a pretty good candidate for the best, since it has what are probably the best first 200 issues in the history of superhero comics, and 1975 is right in the sweet spot where the book was at its best. It's even an Archie Goodwin/Gil Kane issue, and that's a pretty solid team.

In practice, though, well...

...we probably could've done without that one.

Adventure Comics -- always a good source of bizarre stories -- hit #150 around the same time that 'Tec did, and while the actual stories are kind of lackluster, the splash pages are basically amazing. First, a bunch of boys in strange hats learn why trying to spank Superboy isn't a great idea:

It's essentially a morality play designed to get children to stop spanking new members of their high school fraternities or making them walk on tightropes. Apparently this was a problem in 1950?

Not to be outdone, the Shining Knight spent his splash page in this issue fighting a newspaper that rides a horse, as drawn by Frank Frazetta:

Comics that hit 150 issues are a little more rare as you get to the modern age -- especially in recent years -- but another favorite of mine hit that milestone in 1994: G.I. Joe #150, in which Snake-Eyes fought his way into the Cobra sanctum sanctorum, set Cobra Commander on fire with white phosphorous and beat him to a pulp, all to rescue his dear friend, Storm Shadow.

Which we know because that's exactly how they summed it up in the next issue:

Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the summary is a little more exciting than the actual event, largely because Snake-Eyes' fists were not actually on fire during the aforementioned beating. The actual issue is a little weird, and while it involves Cobra Commander's anti-ninja holodeck and multiple kicks to the face, there's also a lot of Snake-Eyes hanging out without his mask on so that his blonde mullet can flow free, pointing at his tattoo and silently forcing Scarlett to carry the burden of expository dialogue. Storm Shadow is also turned evil again by the use of a gigantic mind control machine, but really, in a G.I. Joe comic, that's neither good nor bad. It's just something that happens with alarming frequency.

Let's see, what else is there... Uncanny X-Men #150 has one of their more melodramatic battles against Magneto, who is weirded out when he almost kills Kitty Pryde, presumably because she was wearing the goofiest damn costume in X-Men history... Jimmy Olsen #150 is from that weird hit-or-miss Post-Kirby period... Ah! Here we go.

As great as Batman's anti-c**k-blocking robot might be, I think I have found the champion: 1962's Superman #150, featuring a story by Robert Bernstein and Kurt Schaffenberger (the best Superman artist ever, deal with it) in which Lois Lane challenges Lana Lang to a duel to the death...

...and was then shot by Lana Lang, leaving Superman to dispose of her corpse.

This thing is amazing. As you might expect, this whole bizarre situation was a ruse, but unlike the standard Superman story of the time, it's not one that Superman was pulling to teach his friends a lesson. At least, not at first.

Instead, Lois and Lana are having dinner together and commisserating over the fact that Superman won't commit to a relationship when they hit upon the genius idea of trying to murder each other so that he'll finally pick one of them. Seriously: That is their plan. So they stage an elaborate hoax during Superman's televised appearance at a Tunnel of Love (because that's what Superman did back then), in which Lana pushes Lois into the water and Lois emerges shouting "I've suppressed my murderous impluses! Now I'm going all out for revenge!"

She oversells it just a little bit.

Still, it's a promo worthy of Dusty Rhodes, and combined with a couple of glove-slaps that I can only refer to as "highly erotic," it's enough for Superman to buy the whole thing. So he does what Superman does back then when he's not appearing at theme park ride openings: He stages an elaborate hoax of his own, involving -- what else? -- robot girlfriends! He makes one of Lois and one of Lana, and then, just in case this wasn't every weird Lois Lane story trope cranked up to eleven, he locks the genuine articles up in the nearby castle they're using for their battleground -- sorry, did I not mention that there was an isolated European castle in Metropolis in this story? -- and then tricks each of the women into thinking they accidentally murdered each other.

Please note how super-stoked Jimmy is over this plan.

Under normal circumstances, this would proably be where it ended, but we still have one more twist to go. When Superman lets Lois and Lana out of their impromptu prisons, they each assume that the other was faking to get some advantage in their ongoing feud for Superman's heart, and start going at it with actual battle-axes and longswords.

Let's be real with each other for a second: If you tell me that you have read a better piece of dialogue than "Sorry, Superman! I can't listen to you! I'm too busy killing this hussy!" then you are lying through your teeth and are not to be trusted.

The girls end up going over the parapet, but when Superman saves them, it's revealed that these are actually the robots, and the real Lois and Lana were pulling another hoax in order to teach Superman a lesson about trying to teach them a lesson! There are three levels of hoax involved here! This is straight up Inception levels of emotional manipulation! It is amazing.

So that's it: Unquestionably the best 150th issue of all time, definitely worthy of the kind of celebration that requires very expensive gifts.

Or cash.

Hint hint.

That's all we have for this week, but if you've got a question you'd like to see Chris tackle in a future column, just send it to @theisb on Twitter with the hashtag #AskChris, or send an email to chris@comicsalliance.com with [Ask Chris] in the subject line!

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DC Unveils Redesigned 'New 52' Joker's Daughter

Chris Sims — 2013-04-19T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC

Hoo boy.

Hoooooo boy.The image above comes from a post on the DC Comics blog yesterday teasing an upcoming appearance by a new version of The Joker's Daughter.

DC didn't announce any details, but this would appear to be a revival of the character originally created by Bob Rozakis and Irv Novick in 1976's Batman Family #9. I've written about that story before, but the short version is that she claimed to be the daughter of various Batman villains (complete with pretty amazing names like "Scarecrone"), before finally being revealed to be Duela Dent, the actual daughter of Two-Face. Since then, a few different versions have popped up, always using the "Joker's Daughter" gimmick. Most recently, she appeared in a Teen Titans story and was eventually killed in Countdown, a series that we usually only mention under extreme duress.

Now she has the Joker's severed face and a pie made of broken glass.

Seriously. A broken glass pie.

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'Injustice: Gods Among Us': Surprisingly Fun, Astonishingly Stupid

Chris Sims — 2013-04-18T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Reviews, Gaming, Opinion

This week finally saw the release of Injustice: Gods Among Us, the new game from the creators of Mortal Kombat in which DC's most popular characters (and Aquaman) wage a brutal battle for the fate of a dystopian parallel universe. Regular ComicsAlliance readers may already be aware that I've had my issues with the plot of the game, but despite that, Warner Bros. Interactive was kind enough to provide us with a review copy so that I could see whether the game itself made it all worth it.

The short version? As a game, stripped of every shred of context and story, it's actually a pretty solid, highly enjoyable fighting game. The second any attempt at a story creeps into things, though, it becomes astoundingly bad in record time.Let's start with the good stuff: In terms of gameplay, Injustice is a hell of a lot better than I expected. I like fighting games a lot, and the ones I tend to enjoy the most have controls that are simple to learn but lend themselves to complex variations and strategies. That's actually one of the reasons I never really liked Mortal Kombat to begin with -- I have never in my life had the coordination or memory for button combinations to pull off a Fatality, and once that's not an option, MK loses a lot of its appeal. Injustice, however, keeps things pretty simple. Most of the special attacks are easy to pull off; almost all of them rely on the simple quarter-circle + attack or back, forward + attack moves that are the foundation of the genre.

Best of all, the coolest moves are the easiest to pull off. The big Super Attacks are just pulling both triggers at the same time once you've got the special meter full, and the big attacks that send your opponent flying into other areas of the stage are as simple as they could possibly be. You just need to move to the right place and press Back + Strong Attack.

The simplicity of the controls keeps the fights moving in a pretty frantic, fast-paced style, and it helps that almost all of the characters are pretty fun to play with. It might be the biggest failing of the gameplay that it's pretty easy to tell which characters had a ton of thought put into how they work, and which were just sort of put there to fill out the roster. The Joker's a particularly good example of the former, with a very distinctive fighting style that's funny and sinister at the same time, based around pulling different comically huge weapons like a bazooka and a crowbar out of his pockets and using them to bash his opponent. He's definitely loaded with visual references to big Batman stories, but it's the sort of thing that really works in a fighting game. At the other end of the scale, you have Shazam, who's really just generic and boring in this game, the Flash, who doesn't really translate well to a fighting game, and Aquaman, who is apparently best known for stabbing people with a magic pitchfork. Most of the other characters fall into the middle, and while it's kind of surprising that Batman's as bland as he is (outside of a pretty great super attack), the good tends to outweigh the bad.

Where the game really shines, though, is level design. One of the big selling points of the game is that there are a ton of objects in each stage that you can interact with, and it really does deliver in some fun, clever ways. It's even set up so that different characters interact with objects in different ways: Smaller, quicker characters bounce off of things or move them around, while the ones with super-strength just rip them out of the background and hit you with them. Throw in the transitions to other parts of the level, which occasionally take detours through the Phantom Zone or a fight between Atom Smasher and Giganta, and it all combines to make things really dynamic.

The best level for this, hands down, is the Hall of Justice. It's full of background Easter eggs and cameos from other DC characters, including a transition where you can kick your opponents into a Boom Tube that leads right to Darkseid's throne room, where Darkseid takes a few seconds to beat the living crap out of them and then blast them back onto the roof with the Omega Effect. Then you can clobber them with a statue of Orion. It's a fun time.

The voice acting's a little hit or miss, but again, the good outweighs the bad. Kevin Conroy and George Newburn reprise their roles as Batman and Superman from Justice League (and, in Conroy's case, most Batman stuff from the past two decades), and they do a predictably solid job. I do not envy Richard Epcar for having to take over the Joker after Mark Hamill retired from the role, and he definitely suffers by comparison. Still, it's a solid cast.

So that's what's good about it.

Here's what's bad: Everything else.

To start with, there are the costumes, which are straight up hot garbage. The alternate-universe "Regime" and "Resistance" suits in particular -- seen above with Assassin's Creed Shazam and Bad Iron Man Cosplay The Flash -- have taken some of the most simple, elegant designs in comics and made them look as atrocious as they could. They're stupidly busy, covered in seams and spikes and hood ornaments and dyed black, to the point where I am 100% convinced that someone saw a bunch of '90s Total Justice toys and thought "oh, we can have worse designs than that." They look like someone did an entire line of bootleg flea market action figures based on a seventh grader's notebook.

Worse than the costumes, though, is the story that makes up the game's single-player campaign. This is, without question, one of the worst-written games I have ever played. The basics of the plot -- written by Brian Chard, Dominic Cianciolo, Jon Greenberg, and John Vogel with Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray brought in as consultants -- are that the Justice League goes to a parallel universe where everyone's an a**hole. Seems solid enough, right? If nothing else, it provides a framework for a bunch of characters who are usually pals to fight each other, and as an added bonus allows for there to be at least two Batmans involved. It's the sort of thing that we've seen time and time again in comics, and it's pretty hard to screw up. But somehow, against all odds, they managed.

When it's not mediocre, it's an eye-rolling cliché, and when it's neither one of those, it's insultingly stupid. The dialogue is genuinely awful, to a hilarious degree. My three favorite moments -- if "favorite" is the word I'm looking for here -- are as follows:

1) Hal Jordan (the good guy version) finishes beating up Raven and announces "Guess I won't be getting any more lip from her."

2) The Joker finishes beating up Nightwing and smirks "I'll have to tell Batman there's been... a death in the family."

3) Cyborg finishes beating up Lex Luthor and his post-win line is "Wardrobe malfunction," because Lex Luthor is wearing power armor. Please note that this game came out this year.

There's also a speech that Wonder Woman gives about beating people up with compassion that ought to be earmarked as an example of exactly how not to write the character, and an insane exchange between Batman and Catwoman about how she infiltrated Evil Superman's army in order to help him so that they could beat him up and go to the bone zone, but Batman thinks that's dumb and doesn't like her, so she calls him a bastard and they fight. It is nuts.

There is exactly one (1) good scene, when Good Superman finally shows up to help defeat his evil counterpart and ends up fighting Sinestro and Evil Hal Jordan. After winning, he takes Sinestro's ring, looks at Hal and says "Here's your chance to do the right thing," and Hal, after a long moment, takes off his ring and hands it over rather than fight Superman, finally realizing he's been wrong all these years. It's a really nice scene, and it's so frustrating, because it shows how right they could've gotten everything, and how far they went in the opposite direction.

Case in point: That very scene happens right after a quicktime event mini-game (joy) where Black Adam is scooping up cars off of a busy street and throwing them, drivers and all, at Good Superman. The object of the mini-game is to match buttons so that Superman can blow up the cars with his heat vision. You may have noticed a problem with this scenario, and if you have, congratulations: You thought about it one second longer than anyone who actually made this game.

Incidentally, it's worth noting that Superman's super attack is punching people into space, which is how he killed his wife and unborn son in the prequel comic. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't crack me up. It's his signature move!

I can't imagine it's hard to come up with a story that allows for a bunch of characters to stand around hitting each other. That is, after all, what superhero comics have been doing for the past 70 years, and in a fighting game, you don't even need that. "Alternate Dimension bad guys" would've covered it, trust me. I'm not sure Marvel vs. Capcom 2 even had a story, and I've played that game for weeks on end. Unless it's the epic tale of someone who wants to take you for a ride, I'm pretty sure it's just about people beating each other up in interesting ways, and that's okay.

If this game was just "Classic" mode, the arcade-style version where you just fight your way through a bunch of random characters, end at Superman and get a quick (and occasionally mystifying) ending, it'd be fine. Instead, they went overboard trying to justify everything, including throwing in Kryptonian nanotech! to answer the question no one was asking, about why Harley Quinn could kick Doomsday through a building, and wound up burying a genuinely good game underneath an endless pile of complete and utter nonsense.

Is it worth playing? Yes, especially if you can pick it up on the cheap or get it for a few days with a rental. Is it worth paying attention to anything that happens on the screen beyond instructions on how to throw a batarang or use heat vision? Not at all.

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Brandon Graham And Emily Carroll Put A Sinister Spin On Betty & Veronica

Chris Sims — 2013-04-17T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Art

If you've read Prophet, you've already seen Brandon Graham put his own incredibly enjoyable spin on a property that you might not expect to match up with his unique sensibilities. This week, though, he and artist Emily Carroll went a step further by retelling a classic Betty & Veronica story, taking the established gag and turning them into something sad and sinister.

The original story, a George Gladir/Dan DeCarlo five-pager called "Boo Hoo Déjà Vu," finds Archie's favorite girls traveling to a far-off mall and running into what appears to be their male doppelgängers, so already things are a little bizarre. Check out Graham and Carroll's versions below!First up, Graham's version:

Then Carroll's more surreal, horror-inspired take:

To see more art -- and how it compares to the original -- check out Graham's website. And who knows? With Archie experimenting with their format as much as they have been over the past few years, maybe a Brandon Graham or Emily Carroll run on Betty & Veronica isn't as far-fetched as it seems.

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The Annotated 'My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic' Volume One

Chris Sims — 2013-04-17T13:30:00+00:00

Filed under: IDW, Humor

It's not really surprising that Katie Cook and Andy Price's My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic comic from IDW is a pretty great read. Not only does it have two great creators behind it, but it's managed to perfectly capture the feel of the show and the sense of humor that made it such a crossover hit. And with that sense of humor comes plenty of pop culture references.

That's why ComicsAlliance is taking a close look at the first arc of My Little Pony, digging in deep to highlight the references Cook and Price have dropped into their story, and explaining just what they might mean for everyone's favorite ponies.My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic #1:

3.1: Cook and Price kick off their story with a big establishing shot of Ponyville, and in addition to featuring characters from the show, it's loaded with cameos. The easiest ones to spot are probably a pair of blue, black-suited ponies inspired by Jake and Elwood, The Blues Brothers, hanging out on a balcony in the upper left. Below them in the plaza, though, are these two:

The friendly (if squinty) moustache retailer on the right is inspired by Tom Selleck's character on Magnum P.I., complete with Hawaiian shirt, Detroit Tigers cap (not LA Dodgers as I'd originally thought, whoops!) and a Ferrari logo for his cutie mark -- which, interestingly enough, is a horse. On the left, as revealed in Price's own notes for the page, is a pony inspired by Jason Lee's Earl Hickey from My Name Is Earl, complete with a list of past sins to atone for.

At the bottom of the page, Price included himself (the blue pony with a bat-winged pencil cutie mark) and his wife, who apparently has the telekinetic ability to destroy planets. Nearby, you can spot the green pony based on Katie Cook:

6.3: The curly-maned pony pointing at Fluttershy is, of course, based on Donald Sutherland as he appears in 1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Appropriate, considering what's happening in the rest of the issue:

7.6: As a follow-up, Twilight's library includes a book called Incident at Santa Mira, a reference to the town in which Body Snatchers takes place. Continuing the horror theme of the issue, there's also a copy of To Serve Ponies (a reference to the classic To Serve Man [spoiler: it's a cookbook]) and How I Did It (from Young Frankenstein).

8.6: Rainbow Dash shares a catchphrase with both former wrestler Benjamin J. Grimm and current wrestler CM Punk.

14.5: Rainbow Dash gives Fluttershy some sage advice:

The sage in question is, of course, Dalton, the lead character in Road House (1989). Dalton, played by Patrick Swayze, is a legendary "cooler" and philosopher who cleans up a small town in Missouri by establishing order in a local bar, ripping a man's throat out, throwing a polar bear at a fat man and then helping the town cover up a murder. It's a little surprising that this movie would've made it to Ponyvile, but not surprising at all that Rainbow Dash would be a fan.

21.1: The Secretariat Comet is named for Secretariat, a horse that won the Triple Crown in 1973. And honestly, Cook should be applauded for keeping the horse puns to a minimum.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic #2:

3.1: This issue focuses on the ponies exploring the mines of the Diamond Dogs, and since they were already a reference to David Bowie, it's no surprise that Bowie references are a recurring theme in this issue. It starts here, with the two statues labeled "Ziggy" and "Stardust," two perfectly appropriate pony names that are also one of Bowie's alter-egos. For those of you who may not be familiar, Ziggy played guitar.

4.6: The troll who wants to play with the Ponies (and the way Cook and Price pose Fluttershy here) is a pretty obvious reference to the toys on which the franchise is based and their brushable hair, but the shelf features another item of interest: A homemade Optimus Prime:

Thus, My Little Pony confirms what I already knew: Trolls love Transformers.

6.3: The Troll naming his pony "George" is likely a reference to Of Mice and Men, but more likely a reference to the Looney Tunes cartoon "Abominable Snow Rabbit," in which a yeti makes reference to Of Mice and Men.

8.1: Another Bowie reference, with the statue of the Diamond Dog decked out like Aladdin Sane:

10.3: The sign advising miners to sashay on the boardwalk and scurry to the ditch is a lyric from "Diamond Dogs," although it does raise the question of where one would place a boardwalk in an underground mine.

14.2: The line "I'm a cowboy, howdy howdy howdy!"...

...is from a classic installment of Gary Larson's The Far Side, where it was originally spoken by a cosplaying vulture. Judging by Applejack's reaction, she seems like more of a Pluggers fan.

15.1: "Thwip" has been the accepted comic book sound effect of spider-webs being shot out since 1962.

15.2: Rarity's first rule for combat is a nod to Anchorman (2004), and the sign for Red Gems gives us another Bowie reference. This time, it's "red like jungle burning bright" from "Cat People." I wonder what Rainbow Dash thinks of Inglourious Basterds?

19.1: No points for guessing what the inscription on the mine's exit is from. (Bowie's "Golden Years.")

22.1: The map of the Ponies' journey features our final Bowie reference of the issue with "they call them the Diamond Dogs," but there's also a whole lot else thrown in for good measure. Other than, you know, a bunch of horse puns I mean:

Dropping "Leota" into Wikipedia brings up a county in Minnesota, but the presence of the Old Mansion in there makes me pretty sure that The Forest of Leota is a reference to Madame Leota from Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction, who conjures up all sorts of spooky stuff.

The Silver & Scout Grove is named for the Lone Ranger and Tonto's horses.

The Froud Valley is likely named for fantasy illustrator Brian Froud, who worked on Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic #3:

6.2: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is a common enough proverb that I can't really say whether Fluttershy is quoting Star Trek II, but, you know. Close enough.

9.1 - 9.4: Along the same lines, I am almost positive that Pinkie Pie having a giant Pinkie Pie costume is not a reference to a 2005 Achewood strip where Ray Smuckles dressed as Ray Smuckles for Halloween...

...but I want it to be so much that I'm counting it anyway.

12.2: "Bamf" is the accepted comic book sound effect for teleportation since 1975.

13.6: Rarity has the same feelings about snakes as Dr. Henry Jones Jr., known primarily for his hatred of Nazis and genuinely awful approach to archeology.

16.5: This is another one where I might be reaching, but it's hard to see a cute little rabbit with fangs and a vampire cape...

...and not think of Bunnicula, a series of kids' books written by James Howe about a rabbit that may or not be roaming the night, sucking the juice out of vegetables. Then again, these are actually described as vampiric jackalopes, so it's probably just me.

EDIT: Katie Cook confirmed over Twitter that it is indeed a Bunnicula reference.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic #4:

5.1: The layout of Queen Chrysalis's castle and its confusing arrangement of stairs is pretty obviously based on M.C. Escher's Relativity....

...but the bouncing crystal ball is likely another callback to a similar scene in Labyrinth (1986). There's David Bowie all over this dang book!

7.1 - 7.5: Each of the doors opened in Chrysalis's hall leads to another pop culture bad guy:

Clockwise from the top left: The pony with the flaming apple is a reference to Mola Ram, the heart-ripping high priest of Kali from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), the creepy clown is Pennywise from Stephen King's It, the dapper dresser with the organ is The Phantom of the Opera (specifically Lon Chaney's version from 1925), and the boring twins in room 237 are references to The Shining (1980). The inset's root cellar door and the promise to swallow your soul is a nod to Evil Dead II (1987).

8.1: The riddle asked to Twilight Sparkle is pretty similar to one asked to Alice in Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland. Neither one has a proper answer, although it's interesting that only Pinkie Pie gets that. It's almost impossible to think that Twilight, who lives in a library, would not have read Equestria's equivalent of that story if it existed, which means that these ponies live in a world where Alice In Wonderland doesn't exist, but Road House does.

10.4: The sound effects in this panel are lifted, typography and all, directly from Batman '66:

21.1: Princess Celestia's reference to Canterlot being attacked by "a giant magical marshmallow pony" is a reference to the climax of 1984's Ghostbusters. It's difficult to imagine how that came about, considering that Celestia, a magical immortal who literally commands the sun to rise each morning, would likely respond to "are you a god?" with an unambiguous "yes."

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'Lego Marvel Super Heroes' Will Let You Create Your Own Hero

Chris Sims — 2013-04-16T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Gaming

I'm a big enough fan of Traveller's Tales' LEGO games that I was planning on picking up Lego Marvel Super Heroes already, but today they added an interesting new feature to the game that sounds like it's going to be a blast to goof around with. In addition to playing as characters like the Avengers and the X-Men, players will be able to create their own superheroes, mixing up the abilities from the different characters already in the game.

Finally: A game where Wolverine can have rocket boots. It's amazing that it's taken this long for that to happen.The ability to build your own custom figure has been a part of the Lego games for a while, but adding superpowers into the mix is a pretty cool new twist. Players will be able to combine powers of heroes and villains, but they won't have a completely free choice of what to do. They'll be limited by size categories: Characters like the Hulk are classified as "Big Figs," and have a different set of abilities to choose from.

Even with that limitation, though, there'll still be plenty to choose from. And by that, I mean giving everyone Jet Boots. Because why would they ever not want jet boots?

[Via Siliconera]

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Greg Pak Talks 'Code Monkey Save World,' His New Kickstarter Funded Project With Jonathan Coulton and Takeshi Miyazawa

Chris Sims — 2013-04-16T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Interviews

Yesterday, Greg Pak launched a new comics project called Code Monkey Save World with musician Jonathan Coulton, in which Pak and artist Takeshi Miyazawa take characters from Coulton's songs and put them into a grand supervillain team-up adventure. It launched on Kickstarter with the promise of sixty pages of comics and a new song from Coulton, and within the first few hours, it smashed through its goal with no signs of slowing down.

To learn a little more, I talked to Pak about how a project that started out as a joke on Twitter managed to raise over $50,000 in less than ten hours and why he's embracing Kickstarter as a way for fans to pre-order comics, and we even get into an argument about Styx. Who's right? You decide.ComicsAlliance: According to the press release you sent out, this entire project started out as a joke on Twitter.

Greg Pak: Yeah. I've been friends with Jonathan Coulton since college. We went to college together, and I've listened to his music and been a huge fan of his stuff for years, and I've listened to his songs again and again. I'm a genuine, honest-to-gosh Coulton fan, and at a certain point, I realized that a ton of his songs basically star these heartbroken monsters and supervillains, and I thought "wow, this could make a great story." A supervillain team-up, basically. So I tweeted that, and Jonathan tweeted back right away, and all he said was "do it." I emailed him a little bit later and said "I'm serious," and he said "dude, so am I." That's how it happened.

He owns all of his music, and when I do this kind of stuff, I own my work as well, so if he said yes and I said yes, and when all the folks who are pledging say yes, it can happen. It's exciting.

CA: I was curious about that, whether he knew of your work or if he thought you were someone joking around about making comics based on his songs.

GP: I definitely was in a good position to get his attention, because he knows me. [Laughs] We know each other, so I'm fortunate in that regard. He didn't grow up reading comics all the time, he didn't have an LCS as a kid, and so he was aware of the fact that I was writing comics, but my guess is that the first comics he'd read in a while were comics I'd put in his hand a year or so ago when we were just hanging out. I think he just trusted me and my sensibilities, particularly when he saw the outline I sent him. I said "hey, this is what I think we could do," and he got really excited, and we went for it.

CA: You talk about the characters from the songs teaming up, and as someone who's more familiar with your comics than his music, was there already a shared universe there? Was that something he'd gone into those songs wanting to build through music?

GP: No. There's no crossover between the songs -- no intentional crossover, anyway. I just think that there's no reason these folks can't exist in the same world. As I started really analyzing the songs really closely, I started realizing how many interesting ways these things could cross over, and how this universe made sense.

For example, he's got a song called "The Future Soon," which is basically a song sung from the point of view of a kid who's maybe 12 years old, who's pining after a girl in his class. This is a strange kid who ends up concocting this fantasy of building a robot army and taking over the world in hopes of impressing this girl. Then there's another song called "Skullcrusher Mountain," about a full-grown supervillain who lives on Skullcrusher Mountain, surrounded by his savage wolf guards and he makes half-pony, half-monkeys and all kinds of nefarious stuff, but he also longs after a woman. It just occurred to me that the character from "The Future Soon" could be the kid version of the character from "Skullcrusher Mountain." Stuff like that.

There's a lot of interesting places where these songs fed into each other, and could totally live in the same world. And when it comes down to it, the characters are so strong. He's got these great characters who are weird and funny and a little scary, and most importantly have so much heart. Even the villains are vulnerable in a very endearing way, and they're filled with all this desire. It makes for great drama.

CA: How does that affect your approach to writing them in comics? Is it more challenging for you because you have to make it work with the songs, or is it like coming on a superhero comic, where you just put your spin on it?

GP: I think it's both. A song has a little less content in it than, say, a comic book, so there's a little less detail. I run a little less risk of contradicting previous continuity in that regard, there's just fewer words [laughs]. But I haven't even had to really worry about it, because I just love the characters. I love the way he set these characters and situations up, and it's a ton of fun to work with them. There are certain things that I'm tweaking a little bit, but I can't even really think of anything I've got in the story that contradicts what's in the songs. It's just putting them together in interesting ways.

CA: Let's talk about Takeshi Miyazawa a little bit.

GP: Yes! Oh my God, Tak, he's amazing. We worked together for the first time on the Amadeus Cho origin story back in the day.

CA: In Amazing Fantasy #15.

GP: I loved what he did there. He's one of those artists who's just in my head. There are certain characters and certain stories that, if I give it to him, I know he's going to show me whatever was in my head that I didn't even know was there. He did that with Amadeus, as soon as he sent the pictures, I was like "Oh my God, that's the guy!" It was perfect.

Same thing with Code Monkey. I described Code Monkey to him and just sent him a few words about these characters, and he sent back sketches that just captured it completely. With Code Monkey in particular, he made him cute, but also slightly dangerous too at the same time. He's seething with repression, he's totally repressed and unhappy and there's something dangerous there. He's a guy who could become a supervillain, and that's sort of the excitement of pairing him up with Skullcrusher, that Skullcrusher could pull him in the wrong way. He's an innocent, but he could go in that bad direction, and Tak totally captured him on the verge like that. It's just amazing.

Tak also draws normal people like nobody's business. I think there's a huge amount of attraction to stories that take normal people and put them into fantastic situations. That's what we're doing here with this book, and there are some very normal, everyday people that Tak draws beautifully. He makes them totally compelling while at the same time making them realistic. He knows how to draw regular people's clothes, and he understands fashion, the way people wear clothes that reflect their personalities. He's great, and I've been thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to work with him.

CA: You've worked with him a couple of times since Amazing Fantasy, though, right?

GP: Yes. We did a couple of things for Marvel together. Another Amadeus Cho story that was in one of the Hulk books, almost a bookend to that original story. Then I finally roped him into doing a creator-owned thing. We did an eight-page story called Los Robos, which was about a kid who finds a giant robot, and that was in the Shattered Asian-American comics anthology that came out last year. Now this. He also did character designs for the Vision Machine comic.

It's funny, because I feel like I've been working with him forever, but I'm really excited because this is the biggest chunk of pages I've done with him. He's one of those artists that I basically want to work with all the time, and I've been able to work with him here and there, but now we really get to dig deep.

CA: Was he someone you brought in, that you told Jonathan Coulton "I know exactly who should draw this?"

GP: Yes. It's funny, this whole process is new to Jonathan, so he's been excited to see all of this art, but he's definitely been very happy to hear me yammer on about it. For example, when we were talking about colors and everything, it's just new language to him, to think about what to ask for and how to critique stuff. It was as if I was going to go into the studio and watch him make a song. I hope I get to do that, it's going to be really exciting, but yeah. He was thrilled to see the stuff that Tak had done in the past, and when he saw the new character designs, he was blown away the way I was.

CA: So you've got the team set up. You've got Jonathan Coulton behind it. You've got a publisher in Monkeybrain.

GP: Yeah, for the digital comics.

CA: So why Kickstarter?

GP: Because we want to pay everybody what they're worth. We want to pay everybody what they ask for, and if we were not doing this via Kickstarter, we couldn't pay people. We'd have to be waiting to see what kind of money would be coming in from digital distribution, and I'm not comfortable at this point asking an artist to work for a month and not get paid. As a writer, I can do that. I'm working on other creator-owned books that are coming out in other ways, and I'm just not going to get paid up front, and that's fine. A writer can write five books a month, if you're organized with your time. An artist can't do that. A lot of artists need six weeks to draw a single book, and it's just not feasible for most of them to work on spec. So if there was a way to avoid that, I felt we needed to try to find a way to raise the money to actually pay people.

Also, Jonathan has a huge fanbase. He's got people who go on cruises with him! [Laughs] He's got this JoCo Cruise every year, and people literally go on a cruise with him. It's a whole event. He's got really excited and dedicated fans, and it seemed like this would be a fun thing that people would want. That was our hope, and it's panned out so far.

CA: As we are talking right now, the Kickstarter has been up for, what, 12 hours?

GP: Two minutes from now, it will have been up for exactly 11 hours.

CA: And you have $17,000 more than your goal.

GP: That's crazy.

CA: So it's fully funded. It's going to happen.

GP: Yeah. And what's awesome is that now, we can increase the page count, and we have some other cool things that we can do now. I think it's gone up like a thousand since we've started talking.

We're insanely grateful that folks are excited about it. But Kickstarter for comics, it's basically pre-ordering. So people are pre-ordering it, and then we get to make the book and put this money directly into the hands of the people who are making it. It's an amazing gift that the world has given us. It's an amazing tool, and I love all these folks who have jumped on board and were willing to pony up a few bucks to make some awesome stuff possible.

CA: This isn't your first digital comic. You did Vision Machine.

GP: Yeah, and having done Vision Machine set me up with the knowledge to run a project like this. It's actually a very similar scale and similar undertaking. That was a book that was funded by the Ford Foundation, and we released it digitally first, issue by issue, and then we printed up a bunch of copies of paperbacks that we were able to give away. That was the intention from the beginning, it was what the grant was for, so that we could give it all away. Code Monkey's a little different in that we're actually selling it. We're giving it to the backers, and then down the line -- the backers have an exclusive window where they get it first -- we'll release it beyond that.

The experience of having done Vision Machine showed me that it was possible. I learned the different steps of doing the whole thing, so I was grateful for that opportunity.

CA: Along the same lines of asking why you wanted to do kickstarter, I'm curious as to why you wanted to go with Monkeybrain, as opposed to self-publishing it. Was it just because there's infrastructure there?

GP: There are multiple reasons. One, I just love what Monkeybrain does. I think it's a company that was put together by independent comics creators that wanted to take advantage of digital distribution and make it work for independent creators. Sheerly on principle, I wanted to be a part of what they do, and they were incredibly supportive and interested from the get-go.

Also, on a practical level, I really like Comixology. I like reading comics using that Comixology app. Monkeybrain talked to Comixology and we figured out how it could all work, and they gave us the codes to fulfill the pledges so that people could read the comics through the app, and that's how we could deliver the comics. I was really excited about that, because that's how I read comics. I also read them in PDFs when I get those, but honestly, it's trickier to do. There are more steps involved than doing it through Monkeybrain and Comixology, so doing those things together mattered to me.

They've also got Monkey right in the name. It was destiny. Karma. Whatever you want to call it.

CA: I notice that they get the smallest logo on the cover. Greg Pak gets the big logo.

GP: They're all the same width! They had to fit the width, that's all.

CA: So is the story just a one-shot?

GP: We'll see. The sky's kind of the limit. We've been talking about it, trading emails, thinking about it. We don't know how high this is going to go. Right now, what we're doing as of 10:33 Monday night, what's definitely going to happen is that we're doing four digital issues that are released digitally through Monkeybrain and then will be released as a full paperback graphic novel. That may be it, or, if folks keep pledging, we may do another book. We might expand the book we've got, or do a whole other one. The advertised page count is 60 pages, but we're going to bump it up.

There's sort of an endless amount of story potential, honestly, in the JoCo Universe. There's a whole realm of opportunity, so we'll see.

CA: What other musicians do you want to make comics with? Because there's an interesting backstory with GWAR that I don't think has ever been fully explored.

GP: My first choice would be to talk to Styx about the "Come Sail Away" graphic novel.

CA: The dumbest song.

GP: No!

CA: The absolute dumbest.

GP: Shut your mouth, Chris Sims. That song is awesome. There's nothing more awesome than that song. I listen to it at least once a week, sometimes multiple times.

CA: It has a twist ending.

GP: Yes! It's terrific. It's genius.

CA: Right now, you have over 1,450 readers. Where would that put you on the Diamond charts?

GP: [Laughs] It's kind of funny. If you look at just strictly the number of people backing, it's smaller than you'd see on the Diamond charts, but the money ends up being bigger, because the premiums have extra stuff going on. We have mugs and t-shirts and you can buy an ad in the book. A lot of people are paying a lot more than you'd normally pay for a graphic novel, because there's a whole level of experience going on.

One thing that I'm really excited about, I thought "what's a crazy thing that we could do that would be helpful to people and be fun?" And one of our levels is the Code Monkey Secret Insider Package, and if folks pledge $250, they get on a super-secret mailing list where they get an advance look at every stage of production. They get the outlines, the scripts ahead of time. I can't do that through Diamond.

Back when I was doing improv comedy all the time in New York City, there was a really smart guy in our improv group who said "Look, we're in New York. People have a bajillion different things they can do on a Friday or Saturday night, so why are they going to come to our show?" The only way we can get them is if somehow we make it an event. If you're going to do something, and people don't know you, you have to create an event. You gotta create a reason for people to come, you create a story, an event. You make a little show out of it, and I think that applies to comics now, too. This whole Kickstarter thing is beautiful, because it allows people to be a part of something. You're involved in the whole production when you pledge, or you can be. That's fun. I'm happy to be playing in this particular sandbox right now, and I'm very grateful.

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War Rocket Ajax #154: Brian Winkeler and Robert Wilson IV Talk 'Knuckleheads'

Chris Sims — 2013-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: War Rocket Ajax

This week on War Rocket Ajax, we're pleased to welcome Brian Winkeler and Robert Wilson IV to the show! They sit down to chat with Chris and Matt about their all-new digital series Knuckleheads and the trials of writing a comic about a guy who's kind of a jerk -- and you can listen to the whole show right here at ComicsAlliance!War Rocket Ajax #154: Brian Winkeler and Robert Wilson IV
(WARNING: Contains NSFW language)

We are available on iTunes! Click here to find ComicsAlliance Presents War Rocket Ajax in iTunes, where you can subscribe and leave us a review if you enjoy the show!

You can also stream the show using the player above, or download it in MP3 format from WarRocketAjax.com.

On this week's episode, Chris is back from WrestleMania with a story of luxury, while Matt's living woes are more or less sorted out. Plus, in our increasingly divisive Love Haters segment, we finally get around to voicing our opinions of Uwe Boll. Pretty sure we're the first people to ever do that on the Internet.

When Robert and Brian join us, we discuss Bastard Road, Robert's work on music posters, and Brian's reaction to Robert saying his influences were Paul Pope and Morrissey:

"There was a lot of Morrissey in Robert's work when we first met. When we met, his stuff was very somber, and very kind of sad-bastard-music, but he was hilarious! He was telling these great stories that were like these heartbreaking This American Life stories about his teeange years, and I was like 'Oh my God! This funny, hilarious stuff needs to be on the page.' That was a big inspiration."

Show Notes:

Follow Robert and Brian on Twitter!

Check out Knuckleheads on Comixology!

Chris and Matt have experience with Uwe Boll.

Check out Bastard Road, too (NSFW)!

Chris's Rec: The Handle

Matt's Rec: Trader Joe's Lemon Crisp Cookies

Comics Reviewed:

Batman & Robin #19: "We've talked about the WTF covers that totally don't relate to the story inside. This one is bulls**t. It makes me furious. I was furious when I finished reading this comic, and it's not even necessarily about the comic itself."

Saga #12: "The TV-Head Royalty, and specifically the main one of those that we've seen in the series, Prince Robot IV, goes to visit this author and kind of interrogate him. The first half of their conversation has this facade of courtesy, and then it turns to... not that. The way that it plays out reminds me of the opening scene of Inglourious Basterds, where two characters who know what each other are trying to do but aren't saying those things are hiding behind pleasantries."

G.I. Joe: Cobra Files #1: "If you haven't read the first Cobra series, it's amazing, and this is a nice place to jump on. It's using the background of this secret war against a terrorist empire to tell really compelling espionage stories."

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ComicsAlliance Reviews 'Mortal Kombat' (1995), Part One

Chris Sims — 2013-04-15T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Movies, Humor

Chris Sims: Hello everyone, and welcome back to our series of movie reviews focusing on the cinematic classics based on fighting games. This week, it's time to TEST OUR MIGHT as we take on 1995's Mortal Kombat!

Matt Wilson: Congratulations, everyone who voted for the video game movies. We're all going to have that theme music stuck in our heads for two weeks.Chris: I think that's actually the best thing about doing these reviews. For those of you who aren't familiar with the original game, Mortal Kombat is basically just like Street Fighter, but made for people who have no taste.

Matt: Specifically, people who prefer seeing spines being ripped out and digital people falling into pits over appealing graphics and smooth gameplay.

Chris: Right: The main appeal of Mortal Kombat, aside from the edgy decision to misspell half the title, came from the fact that it had a ton of blood and gore, and brutally murderous "Fatality" finishing moves, all of which were too complex for me to pull off even once in the past 20 years. Because of that, I'm really surprised that when it came time for the movie, they went with a PG-13 cut. I mean, on one level that's not surprising at all, since they were targeting teens and a PG-13 movie tends to make about eighteen truckloads more money than an R, but when your project's defining feature is how gory and violent it is, it's a bad step right from the start.

Matt: Apparently the original script was a hard-R, but the assumption was that kids who could walk into an arcade, know a few button presses and see a guy turn his opponent into ice and break him in half could not pay for a ticket to an R-rated movie. I can see how it put the filmmakers and studio in kind of a tough spot.

Chris: As much as I don't care for Mortal Kombat as a game, I still think a Mortal Kombat movie with just ridiculous Evil Dead 2 or Crank: High Voltage levels of blood and gore all the time would've been the perfect expression of the franchise. Instead, we have two hours of Christopher Lambert.

Matt: Avid video game fan Christopher Lambert, who, you have to admit, does seem to be having fun. Along those lines, say what you will about director Paul W.S. Anderson -- and a lot of it is warranted -- this movie does try to adhere to the feel of the first two games (and I think we both have to admit Mortal Kombat II is infinitely more playable than the first) and throw in a lot of little Easter eggs for fans, even without the super-violence.

Chris: It's been a while since I've seen it -- and I'm not sure I've ever actually sat down and watched it from beginning to end, rather than just catching a half hour at a time on TNT -- but I've always felt like it's a much better movie than Street Fighter from a technical standpoint, but infinitely less enjoyable. It has sets, for instance. And professional actors.

Matt: Anderson definitely has a slick style. Watch any of his Resident Evil movies and it's hard to deny it. Style certainly isn't everything, though, as we'll see. As far as the actors go, "professional" is probably accurate. "Well-known," not so much. Outside of Lambert and Bridgette Wilson, who plays Sonya, the cast does not feature a whole lot of household names. (And it's arguable to say Lambert and Wilson are that, either.)

Chris: Fair enough. So are we adequately prepared to step into Outworld and engage in Mortal Kombat with 101 minutes of this movie?

Matt: Let's get toasty.

Chris: I have to say, we're off to a pretty good start when the movie doesn't even wait for the studio logo to get out of the way before it drops the admittedly awesome theme song on us.

Matt: Even the club DJs of the world couldn't deny the pull of this theme song. That it stops playing once the title card hits seems like an early mistake on Anderson's part.

Chris: You mentioned before we started writing that this song should've played in the background of the entire movie, and you're 100% right on that. In fact, I'd be willing to say that this song should probably be playing in the background of every movie. Can you imagine how much more intense the opening of Inglourious Basterds would've been?

Matt: Christoph Waltz subtly bobbing his head to the track as he does his intimidation routine.

Chris: Alas, it's not to be. Instead, we go into a dramatic scene of Shang Tsung, our villain for the evening, beating up on Liu Kang's brother while yelling at the camera.

Matt: Though I said this movie doesn't have too many name actors in it, it does have its share of "Hey! It's that guy!" actors. Case in point: Shang Tsung is Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, an actor you've likely seen in a dozen things at one time or another.

Chris: Including both Baywatch and Thunder In Paradise!

Matt: He was essentially in every '90s thing. Turns out the brother beating was all a dream, as Liu Kang sits up in his very green room and walks over to his dresser to find a telegram that says, "Brother dead. Return home. -Grandfather." Not sentimental types, this family.

Chris: It's one step above a text message, and that's only because texting wasn't really a thing in Shaolin monasteries in 1995. From there, we're introduced to Sonya Blade, who is stomping through a heavy metal club smacking innocent rockers with a shotgun while spitting out tough-guy lines like a slightly more male-gaze-inducing version of Jesse Ventura's character from Predator.

Matt: This movie's soundtrack is really something else. It's such an odd mix of metal (Napalm Death and Type O-Negative are on there) techno (Orbital, the theme), f**king KMFDM and George Clinton. You think two of the producers just couldn't agree on which direction to go in, and this was the compromise?

Chris: The mysteries of Mortal Kombat are many, my friend. There is, however, a reason why Sonya's beating up a crowd at a GG Allin show: She's after Kano, who straight up has the same goofy half robot face that he does in the games. This is a good sign for those of you looking for faithfulness to the source material, and an amazing sign for those of us who love weirdo nonsense movies.

Matt: Kano and Shang Tsung discuss the trap they've set for Sonya, which is intended to get her on a boat to a mysterious tournament. Meanwhile, the audience gets its first look at Johnny Cage in a "it looks like a real fight but oh wait, it's a movie scene" fakeout. Six minutes into this thing, and we've already gotten "it's a dream" and "oh, it's a movie."

Chris: Cage is having some trouble with "The Press" because they don't think he's really a good martial artist, which seems like a weird thing to haunt someone's career. I mean, I'm pretty sure that Tom Cruise would lose a fight to all but the most asthmatic children, but he seems to do all right for himself.

Matt: It's such a strain on him that he gets into an argument with his Spielberg-lookalike director, who was originally supposed to be Spielberg himself. That's right. Steven Spielberg would have been in Mortal Kombat if it weren't for some scheduling snafu. He loves the games, at least according to IMDb.

Chris: I am having an incredibly hard time believing that.

Matt: Everything on IMDb is true, Chris! You know it is! Cage meets up with yet another character actor who has been in everything, Peter Jason, who appears here as a poor man's Kris Kristofferson/karate master to talk his student into participating in this tournament. You know, so that people will think this action star is really a great fighter. Seconds later, not-Kris-Kristofferson reveals himself to be a shapeshifted Shang Tsung.

Chris: I'll say this for Mortal Kombat: Very little of what we've seen has been interesting or compelling, but we do have our three main characters with three distinct motivations for getting involved in this big fighting tournament: Liu Kang and Sonya want revenge, Johnny wants glory. We can pretty much get right to the fighting now, so -- what's that? There's yet another layer of motivation that we're going to get from the star of Highlander? Well, if you say so, movie.

Matt: Let's also give it this: Where most movies would figure out a way to make Raiden fit into a live-action movie with actual people, he is no-question the god of thunder here. Liu Kang goes to visit his grandfather at his Shaolin temple, Raiden shows up and Liu Kang says he's a fraud. Then Raiden's eyes turn to lightning.

Chris: To be fair, it's pretty understandable why Liu Kang would think that Raiden was a fraud, since most Japanese thunder gods don't tend to look like French dudes.

Matt: Raiden was born in the United States, educated in the Swiss Alps, and then moved to Japan to become a god. Makes perfect sense. But really, this is kind of a ridiculous commitment to the world of the games, one where movie stars, earnest kung-fu guys and soldiers co-exist with gods, lizard men and Barakas.

Chris: Like you said, Lambert looks like he's having fun, which is good because he has the least intimidating voice of all time. He seriously sounds like a teenage girl telling secrets, albeit one who smokes four packs of unfiltered Camels a day. Back at the docks, Johnny Cage and Liu Kang have an allegedly hilarious misunderstanding over luggage, and then everybody gets on the boat. It's not very exciting.

Matt: Johnny Cage assuming any Asian guy he sees in Hong Kong is the paid help is the kind of mild buffoonery that passes for comic relief here, yes. As anticipated, Sonya follows Kano onto the boat, too. The boat in question here is basically a ghost pirate ship in the shape of a dragon. It has tatters for sails. It's even accompanied by ominous smoke and everything. It's met with only the mildest of consternation. I guess people in this world must be used to this kind of thing.

Chris: I think this movie might be in Big Trouble In Little China continuity. The first thing Sonya does upon getting on the boat is shove a pistol into Johnny Cage's neck, so of course he decides that she's a feisty one and follows her below when she goes to look for Kano. Incidentally, she asks him "Where's Kano?" and when he says "I don't know who that is," her follow-up is not "He's a cyborg with a giant glowing red eye." You'd think that would help track him down a little easier.

Matt: Below deck, Sonya runs into Shang Tsung and again asks about Kano. Tsung deflects the question by doing that thing guys with boats do to flirt with women, which is offer her a tour of the boat. Before she can reply, Cage and Liu Kang, who are now apparently best buds, walk up to back Sonya up. Out walk Scorpion and Sub-Zero to fight them. They've been reduced here from "most popular and recognizable characters" to "hypnotized thugs." Or as Raiden rasps after he easily dispatches them with some cheesy-looking lightning, "sideshow freaks."

Chris: They do get to have their super-powers, though! Sub-Zero freezes Sonya's gun and snaps it in half (which is also a nice way of explaining why she doesn't just shoot her opponents in the face when they get to the tournament), and Scorpion has his harpoon thing that shoots out of his hand. Except now it's a weird bird from Labyrinth.

Matt: Raiden makes really easy work of them before as much as a "Get over here!" can be uttered, and it actually addresses one of my big issues with the first game. If one of the fighters in a tournament like this was A GOD WHO CAN BECOME LIGHTNING, how would anyone else have a chance?

Chris: Raiden goes ahead and lays out the rules for this whole thing, too, and they're equally confusing: Why does Shang Tsung have to win ten tournaments before he can invade? Why not just one? And if these tournaments have happened over the past ten generations, how come none of these people have heard about it? You'd think it would be a pretty big deal.

Matt: Yes, someone (Sonya) finally has the presence of mind to ask what this tournament is all about, and Raiden explains Shang Tsung wants to enslave Earth, and he'll be able to do it if Team Earth doesn't win. That's all that really matters. He also says, "The essence of Mortal Kombat is not death, but life." Uh, I think any 13-year-old in any arcade in 1995 would have said the exact opposite.

Chris: There's also this weird moment where Raiden laughs, then apologizes and sheepishly walks out of frame that is just so bizarre. It's like something Lambert did on set that they left in the film.

Matt: Christopher Lambert is so delightfully weird. Like, I realize he's not very intimidating (at least here, he's better in the Highlanders), but he's just got this odd screen presence, almost like a Christopher Walken. He'll say the lines he's given, but put these twists on them that no one else would ever even consider.

Chris: Eventually, the Ghost Junk lands on Mortal Kombat Island, which exists out of normal time and space. We know this because Sonya cannot radio for backup and her compass doesn't work, but all that's really just an excuse for me to bring up her oddly high-waisted jeans.

Matt: That's after Raiden informs Sonya, Liu Kang and Johnny Cage that they're the only three fighters from Earth that matter (Then why bring anyone else? You're killing those guys just to kill them) and Shang Tsung does some skull-themed Laser Floyd in the sky. After Sonya's torso-hugging jeans and everyone else arrive at their destination, Cage further provides "comic" "relief" by flopping into the water while trying to carry like 25 suitcases.

Chris: Shang Tsung straight up summons the Dark Mark from the Harry Potter books. It's literally a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth glowing in the sky, which means that JK Rowling is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a Mortal Kombat fan. I've lost so much respect for her, but I guess it could be worse. She could be into Virtua Fighter or something.

Matt: I heard The Casual Vacancy had some long passages about Soul Calibur. Cage continues his luggage-themed shtick, carrying all those CGI rectangles up the many stairs to the ominous Shang Tsung Island Welcome Center, which is decked out with an awful, awful CGI statue of Reptile (which comes to life and is even worse CGI) and features Kitana just sitting around under an umbrella she doesn't need because there's no sunlight or rain in there.

Chris: I assume it's there to protect us from the heat of the straight-up f**k-me eyes she's giving to Liu Kang.

Matt: I can't argue with that. Team Earth settles into a very brown dining hall and soon enough Shang Tsung comes out to give a welcome speech like it's everyone's first day at camp. Then his hooded thugs rush in and ruin everybody's dinner so Sub-Zero turns a guy into ice and smash him to pieces. Again, a lot like camp.

Chris: Shang Tsung teases us a little by letting us know we're going to be seeing the current, reigning and defending champion Goro soon, and then we get another nice little game reference when he announces Sub-Zero's "Flawless Victory." Tagawa really savors the line, too, and it's pretty fun to hear.

Matt: It's concurrently fun and cringe-inducing. It's so blatantly shoehorned in there just to get it in there. But Tagawa almost makes it work, yeah.

Chris: It's no M. Bison shouting "GAAAAAME! OVAAAHHHHH!!!" but it's pretty good. Once dinner has ended with the Mortal Kombat tradition of cryogenic murder, Kang, Cage and Blade (the best law firm ever) wander around for a little while until they see Goro's shadow and get ascairt. It's seriously one "zoinks!" away from being an episode of Scooby-Doo at this point.

Matt: They do not, however, leave clouds shaped as themselves behind. Instead, they sneak up to a convenient vantage point to overhear a conversation between Kano and Goro about how Sub-Zero's over-the-top violence is sickening. I'd say that was almost clever. You know, Goro actually doesn't look too bad, considering how terrible Reptile looked earlier. If I'm not mistaken, he's totally stop-motion. This was one of the last times a big movie used that type of effect, I believe. And he's voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson. That's another plus.

Chris: The scene where he advances on Kano and slaps his wine goblet off the table has a pleasingly muppet-esque quality to it, and if you found this review by Googling "pleasingly muppet-esque," I'd like to be the first to apologize for our lack of erotic fan-fic. Check back in a few weeks when we're watching DOA. Now, I'm not as familiar with the storyline of Mortal Kombat as I am with other games, is it canonical that Kano is absolutely rock f**king stupid? Because he is comedically dumb in this scene.

Matt: He's a criminal Shao Khan hired for weapon training. That's about all you get from the little bios in the demo screens. Anyway, his idiocy is a convenient way for Goro and Shang Tsung to reveal literally all the exposition Team Earth needs to know, including that Tsung feels pretty strongly that Liu Kang and Kitana had better not team up, under any circumstances. So of course, he goes straight after Kitana when he happens to spot her on the way out.

Chris: Between the big four-armed monster, the hilarious stupidity and Kano's Dreadnokian accent, it's almost like an episode of Xena. And I mean that in the best way possible.

Matt: The lighting definitely has that syndicated TV feel to it, too, as Liu Kang heads into an all-blue room and runs into a transparent Reptile, who sprays some gunk in his face. I have to say it again: Reptile looks SO BAD. My wife and I saw Jurassic Park 3D just this weekend and it's hard to imagine that CGI predates this by two years. This is f**king embarrassing.

Chris: It really is, and it's made worse by the awful lighting. I think maybe it was meant to cover up how bad the CGI is, but instead, the bad CGI is the only thing that we can clearly see.

Matt: Team Earth tries to find Kitana, but ends up back in the dining room, where they're attacked by a group of Shang Thugs. What follows is just an okay fight scene accompanied by music that makes it 1,000 times more entertaining.

Chris: For those of you who haven't seen it, it's the theme song posted above again. It's still amazing. I honestly wonder if they piped it into the set to give the actors an extra push while they were doing their own stunts.

Matt: Bridgette Wilson actually insisted she do all her own stunts and fighting, which I have to say is pretty admirable. She's not particularly charismatic as Sonya, but she definitely nails the toughness of the character.

Chris: True, but my heart will always belong to Kerri Hoskins, who did the motion capture for Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat 3, and who also appeared as the villain in Revolution X, a game that has the most insane plot of all time. Go ahead, look it up. I'll wait.

Matt: Now that you're back, Raiden has arrived, too, with the explicit purpose of sending mixed messages. First, he warns Team Earth about a whole bunch of other thugs about to attack them. Then he scares the thugs off. He warns the team about the grave danger of fighting Shang Tsung because he can shapeshift, but says it kind of like he's setting up a joke. Lambert plays Raiden like he's the most eccentric of eccentrics. It's kind of great.

Chris: It does undercut these fight scenes to have the good guys' dad show up and yell at the other kids for picking on them, though. Either way, forty minutes into the movie, it's time for Mortal Kombat to begin! We head outside to watch a stick-fighting match between Liu Kang and a guy who isn't from the game and who, I believe, does not actually get named. Guess who wins.

Matt: It's a pretty well-choreographed fight scene, but it sure is loaded with a ton of unnecessary slow motion. One might be led to believe Visionary Director Zack Snyder learned a lot from Paul W.S. Anderson.

Chris: Liu Kang beats his opponent into unconsciousness, and Shang Tsung stands up and gives every indication that he's about to order Kang to "finish him." You know, like in the games? This is not what happens. Instead, Shang Tsung wanders over, sucks the dude's soul right out of his Zubaz, and then says, about what he just did, "FATALITY." It is the opposite of the earlier "Flawless Victory" moment, in that it is the opposite of charming.

Matt: It screams of a rewrite. My guess is that Liu Kang actually did the fatality in the first draft, then the soul-sucking thing happened. It had to be re-written for rating purposes, but someone also realized someone had to say, "Fatality." And that's what they ended up with.

Chris: It's the worst type of fanservice, too, in that it's the same words that you recognize, stripped of all context. Tagawa does have a nice delivery on "fatality," though. He and Lambert seem like they're having a pretty good time.

Matt: Up next, Shang Tsung does Sony the favor of offering up Kano for her to fight. It's a little weird that these fights are taking place on a beach, isn't it? That seems about as different as possible from all the arenas from the games, with their spike pits and acid baths. It once again gives the movie that Xena/Hercules feel.

Chris: Kano seems to have an unwarranted advantage in this fight, since Sonya's unarmed (and unlegged, having trimmed her mom jeans into cutoffs), while he's got a dagger that I am pretty sure is sold in fantasy catalogs under the name "The Cyber-Wizard."

Matt: That's the second mention of the Muppets in this review. Maybe we're onto something with a crossover. Consider it, Disney.

Chris: Sonya ends up taking Kano over with the least convincing headscissors of two dimensions, and he makes the fatal mistake of setting her up for a pun by asking her to "give me a break." She snaps his neck and, well, I guess that little character arc is over.

Matt: This fight is considerably less impressive than the last one -- maybe some stunt fighters would have been a good idea after all -- but it has just as much slow motion, and actually does end with a "Finish him," so that's something.

Chris: It's still pretty awful, though. It's easy to see why they kept it short.

Matt: At this point, we're basically just going from one fight to the next, which again, is perhaps too much adherence to the games. This time, it's Scorpion vs. Johnny Cage in the woods, where the woods are a place where there's a weird amount of equal space between each tree. Things kick off with the uttering (of course) of "Get over here," which leads to an inordinate amount of really awful CGI of Scorpion's living hand-grapple thing.

Chris: I'm starting to get the feeling that the producers of this movie play Mortal Kombat exactly the way I do, because Scorpion does nothing but stand there using his rope-knife move over and over until the match finally ends. Of course, in my case, the match did not end with Johnny Cage jump-kicking into the portal from Sliders, but, you know, artistic license and all that.

Matt: Scorpion eventually loses his hand monster (that's not a euphemism) when it squishes up against a tree, just before the fight moves into a room kind of like that spike-pit arena from the games, in that there are bones everywhere and there's a walkway. No spikes, though. Even without his rope-knife, Scorpion keeps saying stuff: "Come here!' "Welcome!" "Get down here!' and each time it gets dumber. Scorpion eventually tries his fire-breathing-skull fatality, but Johnny Cage blocks it with a spiky shield, which he then uses to slice Scorpion to pieces. I don't remember him having that in the game.

Chris: Be honest, though: If he did, would you have been able to use the right twelve-button combination to use it?

Matt: Only if I had a cheat sheet handy. Cage drops his trademark signed photo on Scorpion's charred corpse, you know, like he does in the game.

Chris: I will say, this is exactly what I wanted out of this movie. There's crazy glowing blood everywhere and a dude getting chopped up by a buzzsaw, and then his skull explodes and then the rest of his body explodes. If the entire movie was like this -- and, you know, it hadn't taken 50 minutes to get to it -- it'd be great.

Matt: Is the mutilation of skeletal Scorpion the closest this movie will get to the ultraviolence of the MK game series? I guess we'll just have to find that out next week.

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Funko's POP! Vinyl Figures Give The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Terrifyingly Large Heads

Chris Sims — 2013-04-12T17:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Television, Toys, Animation, Culture

If you've dropped by your local Comic Book And Collectibles Retailer over the past few years, you've probably already seen Funko's POP! Vinyl figures. They've done lines based on Marvel, DC, and even classic cartoons like Masters of the Universe. Now, they're gearing up for a new bunch of figures based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Originally posted on the POP! Vinyl fan page, the shots of the new line include all four Turtles, plus Shredder and Splinter, complete with their signature weapons. What it doesn't include is an explanation for how they're supposed to fit those giant heads inside those tiny, tiny shells. Check out shots of the whole line below!

Leonardo (leads):

Donatello (does machines):

Raphael (gimme a break):

Michaelangelo (party!):

Splinter (occasionally makes funnies):

Shredder (shreds):

Even with the head-to-torso ratio issues that need sorting out, they're still pretty cool, and I imagine they'll be a welcome addition to TMNT fans everywhere. After all, I think we can all agree that there just aren't enough TMNT toys out there, right?

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